Continuing on with game thoughts. Now I only watched this after staying up for a fabulous new year's with Molly Tuttle, so it's going to be a bit more off the top of my head than previous notes.
The Warriors pulled off a glorious 132-125 win over the Hornets in Charlotte yesterday morning (10:00 West Coast time) and it felt a bit like a statement game.
Let me put it another way; it felt like a vindication of Steve Kerr. He's taken a lot of heat from fans about not having a consistent 9-10 man rotation, and for not playing young players, in particular Jonathan Kuminga, who remained on the bench. And yet once again in this successful roadtrip his way works. There's two ways I look at this.
The first is what I just mentioned - Strength in Numbers is working. Last year felt so frustrating because with a wide selection of passable-to-good bench players, he would try to find the hot hand only to find that there wasn't one. Players would just not perform unless the stars were carrying them and they would not turn their bad games into good ones.
But now the bench guys are showing up and performing. GP2 made another lefty drive like the other night, and sank an early three. Gui Santos was a madman, particularly in the second quarter where he made three threes including a highlight play where he saved the ball going out of bounds, changed his original target to Melt, then got it right back to swish one. And then Sideshow Podz continued his good string of games, ramping it up even further from three. He had a sweet step-back early, almost Harden-like that will be very useful going forward. Then late in the game he sank two big ones, the first while moving and jumping off one foot as the clock was about to expire. Steve is doing a great job of mixing and matching and somehow pulling all the right strings.
The second aspect was just watching the style of play. The Hornets have some tremendous talent. Brandon Miller is an unstoppable wing, scoring 33 points. Kon Knueppel scored 20 points from all over the court. His performance and the recent Cooper Flagg one showed us what elite rookies look like. But for most of the game (except their five minute burst in the third where they really looked like a team), the Hornet scoring came from isolation play - either a shot or a drive you can imagine them pulling off in any pickup game. Sometimes they'd make a nice pass, but it was the kind that good players make when they play together.
In contrast, the Warriors were always running the offense, doing their ball movement, split cuts, and backdoor passes. It looked like they were going to win the game with the advantages of skill and a plan borne of experience, despite their obvious athletic inferiority. And in the end, they did, though helped greatly by shooting well. There are so many games this season that came down to making or missing shots, and in this game they were making them.
Kerr deserves a ton of credit for this win. He probably won't get it from a lot of people, but he gets it from me. Also, Draymond was excellent, with 12 assists, two rebounds short of a triple double, and solid defense. Steph we just take for granted, but he has to be relieved that 26 points was enough for a comfortable win.
