The Golden State Warriors are far from the only team in the NBA that is surprisingly struggling. Damn, there are surprises all over the league. The Utah Jazz gutted their team and had the best record at the Western Conference.
The most confusing thing about the Warriors’ struggles is why. This is a team that is said to be among the deepest in the NBA. Sure Otto Porter, Gary Payton II and Nemanja Bjelica are gone, but that is supposed to make room for the healthy Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody and James Wiseman to continue the slump.
Through 11 games, the Warriors are 4-7, and they not getting enough from their bench outside Jordan Poole. It has resulted in various players being affected by DNP-Coach’s Scary Decision. Wiseman and JaMychal Green recently signed for one and Kuminga has three. There were games where Moody played 24 minutes and others where he played eight. Kuminga’s minutes have no consistency. One of the few players with consistent minutes is Ty Jerome, who is almost always on the field with a score of 12-15.
Even a quarter of the season isn’t done yet so there’s plenty of time to improve. For that to happen, however, head coach Steve Kerr will have to deal with rotation issues, and not let too many players on the field for so many minutes.
There are 13 Warriors who have played at least eight games this season. Of those, 13, 12 averaged at least 14 minutes per game. Only Wiseman has played less than that, and he averaged 13.8. This is a clear sign that the Warriors staff are still unsure what to do with their roster.
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Other top NBA teams with championship hopes don’t spend crucial minutes on nearly the entire roster. At the Milwaukee Bucks, only nine players average 14 minutes or more per game. The Boston Celtics only had eight players averaging in those many minutes. A team with a similar minute distribution to the Warriors that also play in the Western Conference is the Phoenix Suns. They have 10 players on the field more than 14 minutes a game and one player 13.9 minutes – but it stops there. Suns players average 12th and 13th minutes of 8 and 5.1 per game, respectively.
With Donte DiVincenzo now healthy, it’s the 14th player in the Warriors rotation. The political way to handle the Warriors situation is to combine the old with the new from the bench. Ensure that both sides are represented on a team that, in the near future, will have to either rely on existing young talent on the roster or find more talent from elsewhere.
It’s hard to focus on developing young talent on a championship team. Young players shouldn’t be immune to being sent off the bench for poor play or demoralization, but they should be given the freedom to play to overcome mistakes. Patience is what has allowed the core of the current Warriors of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green to grow into their NBA best selves. They’ve had space to grow into what they are now, but they’re drafted by a franchise that hasn’t won an NBA championship since 1975.
These days, the Warriors are in the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Yankees/Los Angeles Dodgers/Dallas Cowboys team when it comes to relevance in American professional sports. Their ticket prices reflect that.
Now that the Warriors, once an exciting NBA franchise, have become a gem, they have time to spend developing promising young players, or better yet, delay. that to pursue a fifth championship in nine seasons? That question doesn’t need to be answered today, but it should soon. If they get too far into this season without making a firm decision on how to allocate minutes, the Warriors will end up putting their franchise back on both now and in the long term.
