Warriors Flash Fatal Flaw vs. Pacers and Sunday NBA Takeaways
It's results like Sunday's 104-98 loss to the Indiana Pacers that give a certain kind of MVP voter—the one who bolds, italicizes and underlines "valuable" in the award's definition—an airtight case for Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry.
Fresh off beating up the big brother Spurs, the Warriors went into their matchup against the Indiana Pacers looking unbeatable.
They came out beaten.
Curry was sidelined with a sore right ankle, and in his absence, the league's very best team showed its very worst side.
The Warriors shot 38.2 percent from the field and found themselves searching fruitlessly for quality looks down the stretch. Most times, they couldn't find them.
Klay Thompson did what he could to fill in, scoring 39 points on 12-of-28 shooting and making a clear effort to get himself to the foul line. His 10 made free throws were a season high. But even within his stellar stat line, there were indicators of Curry's importance.
Thompson had to create far too many of his own looks, and for all his scoring prowess, he couldn't come close to making his teammates better like Curry does. Klay played 37 minutes and failed to register a single assist.
Crazy as it sounds, we should have seen this coming. Curry's on- and off-court splits this season have been dramatic.
| Curry On | 113.7 | 96.5 | +17.2 |
| Curry Off | 100.4 | 100 | +0.4 |
USA Today's Sam Amick offered up the non-pace-adjusted breakdown of Curry's impact before the game:
Thanks to Golden State's performance, Curry's positive margin has now increased.
What happened against Indiana was nothing new; the Dubs have been a pushover without Curry on the floor for a while now. Last year, their net rating was 14.4 points per 100 possessions better with Steph on the floor than off, per NBA.com.
The broader lesson here—teams tend to perform better when their best players are on the court—is hardly a revelation. But the Warriors really need Curry.
It's not just the stats, which are compelling enough on their own. It's also the way life and creativity bleed out when Curry's not involved. The ball stops, the gravity of the court changes, the pick-and-roll ceases to function and opposing defenses can revert to standard coverages instead of chasing one trigger-happy basketball assassin 35 feet away from the basket.
Curry breaks defenses, and the Warriors' offense breaks without him.
All those wide-open looks for Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green and Harrison Barnes?
Gone.
The scariest thing for the Warriors is that their ceiling with Curry is as high as ceilings get. They've been nearly invincible this season—the best team in the league by a substantial margin, complete with a no-questions-asked championship profile.
The San Francisco Chronicle's Rusty Simmons shared David Lee's comments, which highlighted Curry as a standout player who's difficult to replace:
Without Curry, everything falls apart. The stats say so, and Sunday's game offered the perfect anecdotal evidence.
There are two pieces of good news the Warriors can take away from an otherwise awful loss.
First, they haven't had to suffer very often without Curry; this was the first game he's missed this season. And second, their first-quarter effort (38 points earned in a free-flowing offense that generated nine assists on 13 field goals) looked fantastic.
Maybe they can learn to play without their MVP.
It's just that they'd really prefer not to.
Around the Association
Russell Westbrook and the Transitive Property
So, if Russell Westbrook is playing without last year's MVP, Kevin Durant (again, because Durant's latest foot surgery will keep him out for a week or two, per the Oklahoma City Thunder), only he's playing better than KD did when he won the award last year, does that make Russ the MVP now?
In OKC's 119-94 win over the Denver Nuggets, it sure looked like it.
Westbrook put up 21 points, a career-high 17 assists and eight rebounds on 8-of-12 shooting in only 27 minutes. That hasn't exactly happened frequently in NBA history, per ESPN Stats & Info:
Thanks to that effort, his player efficiency rating is all the way up to 28.9, second-best in the league behind Anthony Davis, per Basketball-Reference.com.
Durant won the MVP last year with a 29.8.
Whether or not Westbrook has unbelievably moved past Durant as the game's top talent is far too big a question to address here. But that it's worth asking says an awful lot.
The Oklahoman's Anthony Slater pointed out how well OKC played without its star player:
Take your time resting up, KD. Russ can handle it from here.
Shump and Earl Just Had to Rub It In
It would seem nobody told Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith that, at this point, picking on the New York Knicks is just mean.
New York came into its home Sunday tilt with the Cleveland Cavaliers in possession of a league-low 10 wins this season, and at the risk of spoiling things, that total would not change upon Cleveland's departure.
The Cavs cruised to a 101-83 victory in which no starter had to play more than 29 minutes. After smashing the Washington Wizards by 38 in their first post-All-Star-break contest, the Cavaliers built a 30-point advantage in this one, led by LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, who tied for the team high with 18 points.
Cleveland has won 16 of its last 18 games.
The game's crescendo came in the fourth quarter, when two players the Knicks dealt to Cleveland on Jan. 5—Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith—connected for one of the highlights of the season.
That had to sting a little for the Knicks faithful at Madison Square Garden—the ones who managed to see it through the eyeholes cut in their paper bags, that is.
Atlanta is Finished Streaking
The Atlanta Hawks made sure their season-worst losing streak didn't reach (gasp!) three straight with a 97-86 road win over the Milwaukee Bucks.
Thanks to improved defensive execution, some quirky dual-point guard lineups and three triples from Kyle Korver in the first three minutes of the fourth quarter, the Hawks got back to their winning ways.
The Hawks' official Twitter account described losing two in a row as "feeling like an eternity:"
Millsap led the streak-stopper with 23 points and 16 rebounds, and he spoke of the changes that got the Hawks back on the right side of the win-loss ledger, per Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"It’s a little bit more than effort," Millsap said. "The effort is there most of the time. The discipline is not always there. Doing what we do. The rotations. We stayed disciplined in that."
Quietly, Atlanta has been mediocre since snapping its 19-game surge on Feb. 2. Entering play Sunday, it had won just three of its previous seven games.
With losses bridging the gap before and after the break, the Hawks needed this one.
Memphis Bears Down
Marc Gasol scored eight of his 21 in the fourth quarter, Courtney Lee hit timely shots and Mike Conley forced Steve Blake to chuck up a hopeless heave with 20 seconds left to ice the proceedings as the Memphis Grizzlies battled back to steal a 98-92 road win from the Portland Trail Blazers.
The NBA's official Twitter account pointed out Gasol's significant contribution to the Grizzlies' win:
It feels wrong to credit just those three, though, as Zach Randolph put up 15 points, nine rebounds and four assists. Jeff Green hit six of his nine attempts for 12 efficient points, as well.
Despite falling behind early, Memphis eventually suffocated a Blazers attack missing the spacing and balance provided by LaMarcus Aldridge, who missed the game with a sprained right thumb. The Grizzlies won the fourth quarter by a margin of 34-15.
Any doubts about the identity of the West's second-best team should be put to bed.
At this point, the Grizzlies might be closer to the Warriors' level than the rest of the pack. And that's saying something.
The Lakers-Celtics Rivalry Continues to Entertain
The NBA's most storied rivalry isn't what it used to be, with the Los Angeles Lakers riding a seven-game slide and the Boston Celtics struggling to make the playoffs in a soft Eastern Conference.
But their meeting in L.A. produced a dramatic, surprisingly entertaining affair—which the Lakers won in overtime, 118-111.
The Celtics wanted this one badly, as Avery Bradley's individual late-game run indicated. The Boston guard contributed a breakaway dunk, took a charge and a made three in the span of nine seconds. Then, when Nick Young missed a pivotal free throw with eight ticks left, Bradley drilled a 25-footer at the buzzer to send the game to overtime.
In all, he scored eight points in the final 27 seconds of regulation.
The Lakers leaned on their vets in this one—most of whom Scott had relegated to the bench in recent weeks in the interest of giving youth a chance. Perhaps because the Lakers-Celtics rivalry holds a special place in his heart, Scott let the vets get theirs.
L.A.'s three leading scorers—Jeremy Lin, Wesley Johnson and Nick Young—all came off the pine. Lin led all scorers with 25.
B/R's Kevin Ding noted his impact:
These two teams won't meet again until next season, so it's fortunate they provided a memorable game to keep the rivalry fresh for a few more months.
It's Time to Re-evaluate the Wizards
The Wizards lost for the eighth time in their last 10 tries on Sunday, this time slipping up against the Detroit Pistons in a 106-89 decision.
Though the Wiz are still 10 games over .500, their per-game differential is all the way down to plus-1.3 points, which marks them statistically as being, basically, a break-even team. They've been a little lucky to this point, and their record is starting to catch up with their peripherals.
That's not particularly surprising, though, as the Wizards spent most of last season hovering around .500 before putting together a nice closing run.
It seems their apparent progress at the tail end of 2014-15 was a mirage.
Even worse, things might be coming apart internally, per Kyle Weidie of TrueHoop:
The Wizards are still a decent team, but barring a major turnaround, it's probably fair to rule them out as realistic participants in a conference final.
The Sixers Stay Interesting
JaKarr Sampson scored 11 straight points in a fourth-quarter rally that nearly stunned the Orlando Magic, but the Philadelphia 76ers couldn't get closer than 96-95 inside two minutes, ultimately falling by a final of 103-98.
Sampson tied Robert Covington for the team lead with 16 points, and deadline-addition Isaiah Canaan hit four triples in 29 minutes.
In the end, Nikola Vucevic was too much for the 76ers' undersized interior, racking up 31 points and 14 rebounds on 14-of-24 shooting.
Maybe the result was predictable, but the process made things interesting. And if we've had anything reinforced relentlessly over the past few days, it's that the Sixers only care about process.
I'll Have Whatever Richard Jefferson's Having
Point of order: I don't want to hear about how that dunk was waved off. It counted in my heart.
Thirty-four is basically 70 in NBA years, and that's what makes Richard Jefferson's turn-back-the-sundial highlight jam in the Dallas Mavericks' 92-81 win over the Charlotte Hornets so satisfying.
Getting the start for the injured Chandler Parsons, R-Jeff (that's how you know he's old; he comes from an era when every nickname was just a first initial and an abbreviated last name) put up 10 points, 10 rebounds and four assists.
Dallas might not be able to count on Jefferson for energy and production like this every night, but it'll certainly take the occasional fill-in effort from the veteran going forward.
Also worth noting while we're talking about vets: Amar'e Stoudemire made his Mavericks debut, scoring 14 points in just 11 minutes off the bench.
Let's hope we get a Jefferson-esque throwback moment from him at some point, too.
