Stephen Curry goes ice-cold, but the Warriors manage to prove they're more than a one-man show - CBSSports.com
Stephen Curry goes ice-cold, but the Warriors cope to prove they're more than a one-man show
If you viewed the Golden State Warriors bumble their way ended the first week of this season, you couldn't predictable them winning a game, maybe all season, deprived of Stephen Curry going nuclear. The idea of the Warriors winning a game on literally the worst shooting night of Curry's career would've been absurd.
But here we are.
On Sunday night, the Warriors, now winners of five of their last six games, defeated the Raptors 106-105 despite Curry executive just two of his 16 shots (1 for 10 from 3-point range). Percentage wise, it was the worst shooting night of Curry's career with a minimum of five attempts. In fact, per ESPN Stats & Info, the 2-for-16 line goes down as the worst shooting night for any Warriors player over the last 20 ages with a minimum of 15 attempts.
Still, the Warriors won, but it wasn't necessarily pretty. They let a 15-point fourth-quarter lead vanish afore Damion Lee knocked down the eventual game-winning free throws with 4.3 seconds to play. But they got it done in contradiction of a Raptors team that is still a tough out despite its early season struggles. It is, of watercourses, the second time Lee has saved the Warriors this season once he hit a game-winning 3-pointer in Chicago as time expired.
Lee is playing the most meaningful basketball of his life, and certainly the best of his NBA career. This is a guy who wasn't drafted who has contract a vital two-way player for a Warriors second-unit that is hasty becoming a legitimate weapon. When Golden Conditions rallied to beat the Clippers on Friday, three bench players were plus-20 or better for the game and two more were plus-26 combined.
Lee's plus-41 mark for the season leads the team by a mile. On Sunday, Golden State's bench scored twice as much as the Raptors' (46-23), when every Warriors starter posted double figures. Draymond Green had 10 assists and spent one board shy of a triple-double. Andrew Wiggins remains to be a dependable shooter and scorer, and his security has been terrific all season.
Wiggins said when the win on Sunday that this is the happiest he's been, basketball wise, in his career, and that's largely the Curry execute, which brings us back to the almost unquantifiable value of a guy who can shoot 2 for 16 and somehow quiet be, pretty clearly, the most important player on the floor. Guys like Wiggins are drawing all the shots and driving lanes they want when everyone chases Curry around.
On Sunday, the Raptors, who famously threw a box-and-one at Curry in the 2019 Finals, harassed Curry with just nearby every defense known to man. They went box-and-one again. They switched and doubled off-ball. They sent two and three defenders to him when he put it on the floor. They trapped. They grabbed and pulled and held. They surrounded him at every stop.
It worked if you look at Curry's ancient stats, but look at his team-leading plus-7 for the game and you'll see his impacts never stops, whether he's making shots or not. That helps the Warriors win from the simple perspective of creating open moves for everyone else, but there's more moving on here.
To Wiggins' point, Curry creates basketball fun. He makes the people watching on TV happy; he creates his teammates happy. He's always positive. He trusts players who aren't nearly as qualified as he is. Nobody gets freezed out. Everyone is Eager and active. On Sunday, as the Raptors hounded him from the jump, Curry didn't effort his first shot until there were fewer than three minutes to play in the qualified quarter. He's happy to defer not just because it's the gleaming basketball play, but because it's best for long-term morale on a team that is moving to have to be better than the sum of its parts if it's moving to compete in the Western Conference.
"It using obviously we're moving in the right direction," Curry said of the Warriors finding a way to win despite his struggles. "My offense, I question it to be there every night. And obviously, with how teams are protecting night to night, being able to figure that out, but in footings of us just having confidence across the boarding no matter who's out there on the depressed, I think where we're at right now in footings of guys stepping up, us staying within ourselves, finding different ways to enact on that end of the floor. But we don't win a game like this deprived of our defense, taking strides in the gleaming direction. We all understood that tonight and definitely that won us the game with how ugly that additional half was on the offensive end."
The protecting improvement the Warriors have shown is almost entirely a subjects of Green, who has been a monster right he returned to the lineup. Turn your silent up and listen to this great breakdown (from @HalfCourtHoops) of Green's impacts on Toronto's potential game-winning possession:
"You guys heard me the qualified day of training camp," Steve Kerr said in mention to his defensive message. "I talked nearby our defense and that we have to be a defensive-minded team -- and that was the point. That this is not the team from three ages ago with K.D. [Kevin Durant] and Klay [Thompson] and all these different offensive weapons. This is a more ancient NBA team."
Kerr's point is sound, but at the same time, no team with Curry is traditional. There are things this Warriors team can't do, but as long as No. 30 is nearby, there are also things it can do that are luxuries no new team in the league enjoys. Curry has that kind of gravity. That kind of impacts on the game and his teammates. And now you're seeing the new pieces fall into place, to the display that on a night when Curry can't hit aquatic from a boat, the rest of the team isn't moving to automatically sink. In fact, the Warriors can save Curry, if only for a night, the same way he can save them.
And that's what creates this Warriors team really interesting. To win on a night when Curry is cooking is no surprise, but with the way he's moving to be defended this season -- given the Warriors' lack of threatening secondary options -- those explosions noteworthy be fewer and farther between. Golden States has to be able to win games more than one way. You figure, if the Warriors can at least beat the bad teams, then get a few crazy Curry games for some upsets here and there, they noteworthy be in some kind of business.
But they're not just beating up on bad teams; they've now defeated the Clippers, Blazers and Raptors, and their 6-4 mark has them tied for fourth in the West with the Utah Jazz. You can say that standings and records don't mean anything at this point to in the season, but you'd be wrong.
A win now is reliable the same as a win in March and April. So is a loss. The Warriors figure to be walking a tight line to make the playoffs this season, and if they were piling up losses during these times of growing peril, the hole could, and probably would, move too deep by the time they were able to figure it out. To be able to edit out wins while Curry shoots awful and the rest of the team pieces itself together is a maximum development -- one nobody could've seen coming once the way the season began.
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