SACRAMENTO — Steve Kerr started off with the basic, elemental things because nobody as smart as he is, and certainly nobody as experienced as he is, ever wants to get too tangled up in big strategic adjustments after a single playoff defeat.
“Throw the schemes out the window,” Kerr said at the Warriors’ hotel after a film session on Sunday, a day after the Warriors lost Game 1 to the Kings. “Throw strategy out the window. It comes down to who’s going to get the ball? Who’s going to get the long rebounds and loose balls? And they did that much better than we did.”
The Warriors gave up 17 offensive rebounds to the Kings in Game 1, which led to many more Kings field-goal attempts against a scrambling Warriors defense and, eventually, the 126-123 final score. That’s structural stuff for the Warriors to fix. Box out. Stay sturdy. Don’t just stand there. They were OK with the defense they played and with the effort displayed for most of the game, but they froze and let the Kings beat them to bunches of rebounds, and that tilted the game.
None of this is brand new to the Warriors’ core players. They’ve taken hits from a lot of great teams and great players over the last decade of playoffs. They’ve always fired right back and, in fact, have mostly fired back with more powerful stuff than any opponent could take. So the Warriors bypassed practice on Sunday and put all focus on Monday’s crucial Game 2 at Golden 1 Center. This is the Warriors’ playoff zen.
“You just stay calm in the face of adversity,” Klay Thompson said Sunday. “You don’t panic when it doesn’t go your way. You just be yourself. Do those three things and I know we’ll be great.”
But this isn’t to say that the Warriors can be loosey-goosey about anything right now. They’ve never gone down 0-2 in the previous 27 playoff series of the Stephen Curry era. They probably will not survive this series if they lose Monday and go down 0-2 to this very talented Kings team. And as Curry noted Saturday night, every Game 1 is a bit of a feeling-out process. You jab somewhere and see what the opponent does to counter it. You get jabbed at and your opponent evaluates, too.
So there are tweaks for the Warriors to make for Game 2. I think there are tweaks that Kerr and his staff were already plotting out before this series, waiting for the right moment. Let’s say that right now is a pretty good moment. Here are some likely Warriors adjustments for Game 2 and beyond.
In Game 2, Curry will probably play more than the 37 minutes-plus he played in Game 1
The Warriors were plus-11 in Curry’s minutes on Saturday. They were minus-14 in the 10:35 he was off the floor. You want something elemental about the Warriors? The simplest way to fix their biggest problems is just to play Curry as much as possible when he’s most needed. And that might be right now.
All of this was particularly obvious in the last 2:18 of Saturday’s third quarter, when Curry went out and the Kings immediately flipped an eight-point Warriors lead into a one-point Kings lead by the end of the period. Then the Kings added three more points to their lead in the first few minutes of the fourth before Curry checked back in with 9:20 left in the game. The Warriors were plus-1 from there. It was not enough.
Is there a guarantee that the Warriors would’ve won this game if Curry had played, say, two or three more minutes? Not at all. You could also theorize that he would’ve been fatigued if he’d played more. He’s 35, not 25, of course. But the Warriors have pushed Curry’s minute totals past 40 in huge games before, most recently last year, in Game 4 of the finals against Boston and Game 6 of the second-round series against Memphis. And Curry did not look particularly fatigued at the end of either humongous victory.
The Warriors wouldn’t want to do it all of the time. They have to spread out these Curry extra-minute games. It’d be reckless to play him for 40 minutes a game throughout an entire postseason. They do need to play better in the 10 or so minutes he usually rests. But they also don’t want to be ejected from the postseason because they kept resting Curry when he could’ve played a little more.
“We played it how we’re going to play it last night,” Kerr said. “Forty-eight hours between Games 1 and 2. … We just didn’t do a very good job while he was out. I don’t regret resting him. I think he’s a player who has to work so hard at both ends, with the ball in his hands and also defensively. I think playing Steph 40-plus minutes isn’t the answer. The answer is handling the non-Steph minutes better.”
OK, but there are 72 hours between Game 2 and Thursday’s Game 3. Could that additional time off mean more Curry in Game 2? “Maybe,” Kerr said. “We’ll see.”
As a side note, the Warriors probably should never have Curry and Draymond out at the same time, but that’s occurring lately because Kerr is taking Curry out for the last few minutes of the first and third quarters and Draymond has to rest then, too, because he’s such a key part of the second unit, which starts the second and fourth quarters while Curry finishes up his rests.
“Sure, sure, we look at all that stuff,” Kerr said of tweaking the rotation to make sure Curry and Draymond don’t rest at the same time. “We already talked about that this morning as a staff. Those are possible adjustments. But then you watch the tape and you go all right, a couple missed free throws and a mistake in transition, it’s a five-point swing and then a couple of missed box-outs. And it’s like, all right, was that rotational? Not really. It’s, we’ve got to box out better. We’ve got to get back better.”
I think they’re going to tweak things in Game 2 by playing Curry all of the first and third quarters, which was his rotation in the early and middle parts of the dynasty, and limit his rest to three or four minutes to start the second and fourth. That would increase his minute total to 40 or more and limit the non-Curry minutes to eight or less. Just for this one game. And then the next essential one.
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Andrew Wiggins probably will start from here on out
He wasn’t perfect in his 28-minute return off the bench after a two-month absence from NBA play, but Wiggins was definitely one of the Warriors’ five best players on Saturday. And he remains one of their two or three most important playoff pieces, because he’s big enough to battle for rebounds and protect the rim and fast enough to chase great scorers and cut to the basket. They’ve won titles with Andre Iguodala and Kevin Durant in that role, and now it’s Wiggins.
So it’s time for Wiggins to get back into the starting lineup, switching places with Donte DiVincenzo, who has done a very good job in Wiggins’ spot in the starting unit but is best suited for a bench role with this team. And Wiggins probably was the Warriors’ best defender against De’Aaron Fox in Game 1, anyway. They might as well start the game with Wiggins out there and set him up for 30-plus minutes a night.
“Andrew looks incredible,” Klay said. “To cut and make shots and play above the rim, to do what he does after not playing for two months in an NBA game is a testament to his ability and his work ethic. He stayed ready the whole time. … He elevates us to another level.”
On Sunday, Kerr was non-committal about the possibility of moving Wiggins back in as a starter for Game 2. Obviously, director of sports medicine and performance Rick Celebrini will have to green-light Wiggins’ return to full-go status. But it’s inevitable at some point this series. Might as well happen Monday.
Jonathan Kuminga must get rebounds or somebody else will get some rotation minutes
Kuminga has done some spectacular things in his first two NBA seasons and did some good things in two stints totaling 10 minutes on Saturday. But he’s never put up consistent rebounding numbers, and recording a Game 1 donut in that category was not a good start to this postseason.
“Would like to see him rebound,” Kerr said. “He didn’t have a rebound last night and that’s gotta be focal point for him and for our whole team. We keep talking about everything, but it still comes back to rebounds. I thought JK did a really nice job in a lot of ways. He could get better.”
Kuminga is one of the few Warriors who can attack the rim in traffic. He’s a high-level athlete who can guard good perimeter players. He can run the floor. Like Kerr says, Kuminga is on a big upward track. But on a team dying for rebounds right now, and that now can deploy Wiggins and Gary Payton II in similar roles, Kuminga has to go grab the ball. Or else somebody else might get his minutes. Maybe Moses Moody?
GO DEEPER
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Gary Payton II can be deployed as the main defender on Malik Monk
Fox was tremendous in Game 1 and likely will be just as good throughout the series. He hit more 3s than the Warriors expected and brilliantly knifed into the lane for a series of huge baskets on his way to 38 points. But the Warriors aren’t rethinking everything they did against Fox. They can live with how they defended Fox in Game 1. But they can’t let Monk get 32 points off the bench again. And I believe that means Kerr will use GP2 as his stopper.
Of course, GP2 will get time on Fox. But that might mostly be Wiggins’ assignment now. Kuminga will get turns on both. Draymond will want to guard both. But GP2 probably is the best matchup for Monk, played him the best in Game 1, and I think Kerr will likely try to match GP2’s minutes specifically with Monk’s time on the court.
That probably means cutting down on some of DiVincenzo’s minutes, who already was down to 20 in Game 1. And it might mean a little less time for Klay unless he’s red hot. Kerr will always ride with Klay in big games, but he doesn’t necessarily have to keep Klay out there for the 37 minutes he played in Game 1, especially against a team that provides as many defensive headaches as the Kings do.
If the Kings are going to play Alex Len, the Warriors have to attack him
The Warriors have rendered several lumbering centers unplayable in a few series over the years. Remember Clint Capela in 2018? Timofey Mozgov in 2015? They usually love seeing those guys on the court, and they usually roast them. But crafty Mike Brown, who knows the Warriors so well, zigzagged them by playing Len for the 13 minutes Domantas Sabonis rested. And Len was active, grabbed 7 rebounds, blocked a shot and was a plus-10 in those minutes. That was pretty stunning to watch, really.
If Brown is going to put Len out there, the Warriors have to win those minutes. They have to get Len in mismatches and attack him the way they attacked Kevin Huerter so effectively on the perimeter in Game 1. Kuminga did some of that in Game 1, but that was just a few possessions. It’s there. The Warriors see it. They know it. They’ve lived through so many similar series.
And that’s the larger point: They don’t need to recreate themselves just because they’re down 0-1. They just need to make a few tweaks, the way they famously turned the series by switching the defensive assignments in the 2015 Western Conference semifinal series against Memphis, putting Andrew Bogut on Tony Allen and getting Allen out of the game. They won a title by moving Iguodala into the starting lineup for Bogut midway through the finals against Cleveland that same postseason. They moved Kevon Looney out of the starting lineup in the Memphis series last year and, at the urging of Draymond Green and Curry, then back in to close it.
“We’ve been through everything with this team in the last decade,” Kerr said.
Over the years, the Warriors have been especially good at tweaking things in the middle of a tough series. They don’t always love talking about them beforehand, but they love plotting them out and pulling them off. They’re due to try a few more on Monday. It’s not desperation. It’s the playoffs.
(Photo: Loren Elliott / Getty Images)
