Monday NBA Roundup: Warriors Finding Ways to Win, Even vs. League's Top Defense
It's hard to know exactly when the inherent unfairness of life as a Golden State Warriors opponent sunk in for the Atlanta Hawks, who fell in Oakland by a final of 105-100 on Monday.
But there's a good chance it happened as Draymond Green was howling at the rafters.
Green closed out an imperfect Warriors victory, their 12th straight, with a pair of dynamic defensive stops during the final minute—first rejecting a Dennis Schroder drive on a switch and then adding a block and strip of Kent Bazemore.
He did some celebrating after each, as is his wont.
The closing stretch was cruelly fitting for a game that highlighted many of the Warriors' frailties and showcased a Hawks foe who seemed well-built to exploit them. Atlanta entered the meeting with the league's No. 1 defense, which is a nice thing to have when you're squaring off with what might be the greatest offense ever assembled.
Atlanta was supposed to succeed with stops, but the Warriors proved they could do the stymying when it mattered most. Defense is still a point of pride for Green and Golden State, as these postgame comments (via Anthony Slater of the San Jose Mercury News) indicate:
To the Hawks' credit, they fought tooth and nail (beak and talon?), sticking with the Warriors for most of the game despite playing for the second straight night. Schroder largely outplayed Stephen Curry, scoring 24 points and handing out six assists while routinely jetting past the MVP on drives into the paint.
Atlanta's defensive focus and strategy forced 11 Warriors turnovers during the first half, and it mixed up styles—sticking with pick-and-roll assignments for some stretches and switching them in others. Golden State fell into some of its typical mistakes, throwing half-hearted passes and failing to summon urgency on defense, particularly in transition:
Monte Poole of CSN Bay Area offered this evergreen assessment:
But this is where the unfairness comes in—at least part of it, anyway. Because as the Hawks executed and exercised discipline with precision sets like this:
The Warriors answered with nonsense like this:
Against Golden State, you adhere to pregame plans and play with superior effort, only to watch as Curry brings the circus to town, accompanied by Kevin Durant's one-footed runners, Klay Thompson's fast-twitch flicks from three and Green's unholy defensive wrath.
Something happens to opponents, something that feels like fate, when they do just about everything right and the Warriors, doing a great deal wrong, win anyway.
Curry, Thompson and Durant combined for 70 points, but only KD made half of his shots, and he finished with a curious minus-seven on the night.
And it didn't matter.
When Golden State's four All-Stars get loose, it's one thing. But when Andre Iguodala takes over a three-minute span in the fourth quarter, or when Ian Clark hits a desperation 26-footer to keep things close in the third...what's the point?
Atlanta comported itself better than any recent Warriors opponent, as Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post observed:
It forced Curry off the line, assigned a wing to Green in order to short-circuit Curry on switches. It slowed the pace and leveraged Dwight Howard's size on the glass. It attacked the two-time MVP and made him defend. And yet, all the Hawks did in the end was offer the Warriors a brisk training session.
Because that's the truly scary, genuinely unfair thing about Golden State: Wins like this—ugly, disorganized, talent-and-desire-driven successes—are just opportunities for a still-forming juggernaut to keep figuring itself out.
This Is How It Goes for DeMarcus Cousins
You can't mention the Sacramento Kings' never-ending struggles without putting at least some of the onus on DeMarcus Cousins. The hiccups in defensive attentiveness, the constant griping to officials, the scowling—Boogie's makeup is both symptom and disease.
But you can still feel bad for the guy.
Cousins pumped in 36 points and 20 rebounds in a 101-95 overtime loss to the Washington Wizards on Monday—a game the Wiz desperately tried to give away. John Wall turned the ball over 11 times, and Washington shot 41.2 percent from the field.
Worse still, after Cousins abused Marcin Gortat on consecutive possessions at the end of regulation, Rudy Gay hijacked the offense and took four of the team's eight shots during the extra period. It was quintessential bad Kings offense: isolation-heavy, stagnant and centered around a player not named Cousins.
It's a good thing Cousins doesn't have to deal with this sort of thing often...oh wait:
The Kings are bound to make a move, and Gay asked to exit Sacramento before the season started. If Cousins is the Kings' guy, here's hoping they find him some help on the market.
Westbrook Triples Up
Russell Westbrook is averaging a triple-double now. So that's cool.
After posting 27 points, 18 rebounds and 14 assists in a 112-103 win against the New York Knicks, the league's stat-stuffing dynamo pushed his averages above a legendary threshold.
The gaudiness: 30.9 points, 11.3 assists and 10.3 rebounds.
Westbrook needed 12 rebounds against the Knicks to get his average up to double-digits. Let's just say he was committed to making it happen:
We probably overvalue counting stats, and we definitely put too much emphasis on the arbitrary accumulation of three of them—points, rebounds and assists—during the same game. Why is 10, 10 and 10 of something better than 12, 11 and nine?
It's not, of course. But we love the numerical symmetry.
Bigger picture, Westbrook is now on pace to become just the second player in league history to average a triple-double for a full season. And we need to be clear about how impressive Russ' potential achievement would be.
Oscar Robertson pulled off the trick in 1961-62, when his Cincinnati Royals averaged an absurd 124.9 possessions per game. The league, as a whole, averaged just over 126 possessions per game that year. That's an almost incomprehensible pace—one brought about by, let's be honest, defense that would get players benched in the modern age.
Westbrook's Thunder play pretty fast, relatively speaking. But they don't even average 100 possessions per game. He has far fewer raw chances to pile up stats. If that weren't enough, Robertson played 44.3 minutes per game when he triple-doubled for a full season. Westbrook, so far, is playing 35.4 minutes a night.
What he's doing right now blows away Robertson's iconic season.
It's Really Hard to Be a P.A. Guy
Let's check in with Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe, setting the early second-half scene, when the Miami Heat trailed the Boston Celtics by 17 points:
I hope he's compensated well, because that's some A-plus feigned enthusiasm.
Everybody on your feet! Life is ultimately meaningless, and it might even be an elaborate simulation. One thing's for sure, though: We all die alone! Make. Some. Noise!!!
Miami missed its first 14 three-point attempts in this one, falling by a final of 112-104 and seeing a fan hit a triple (while seated) before it did, according to Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press:
When Jonas Jerebko is doing this, it's just not your night:
The Heat are 5-12, one win ahead of the Philadelphia 76ers. Commence tank.
K-Low Goes Up, JV Goes Down
The Toronto Raptors finally got back home from a tough five-game stint on the road, and they went right to work correcting their tumbling winning percentage, smoking the aforementioned Philadelphia 76ers by a final of 122-95.
Philly gave up 91 points in the first three quarters, and Joel Embiid didn't play, which kind of diminished the intrigue. So here's Kyle Lowry dribbling around cleverly and finding Jonas Valanciunas for a lob:
One minor concern moving forward: Valanciunas tweaked his left ankle and had to leave the game after posting 12 points and 11 rebounds in only 22 minutes. He may have been able to return if, you know, the Raptors had needed him.
As his elevation on the alley-oop indicates, Valanciunas isn't a guy who depends on bounce for his effectiveness. But his limited defensive mobility can't handle whatever slowdown his injury might cause. The Memphis Grizzlies show up in Toronto on Wednesday, and the Raptors will need all their size for that one.
Gordon Hayward Will Be Treated with Respect
Salt Lake City isn't a major media market, so the Utah Jazz don't get much coverage, but...come on people, it's Gordon Hayward.
Hayward made sure Tom Thibodeau heard his name plenty, generally in the context of "Gordon Hayward to the line, shooting two" during the Jazz's 112-103 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. Utah's leading scorer posted 24 points on the night, using a whopping 15 free-throw attempts to get there.
Rudy Gobert will likely also be well remembered by Thibs and the Wolves. He amassed 16 points, 17 rebounds and three blocks in 34 minutes. With eight of those boards on the offensive end and denials like this one, Gobert's image (like Hayward's name, hopefully) will be burned into the collective memories of the Timberwolves:
The Jazz are turning it on lately, holding the Hawks to 68 points last Friday and currently riding the third-best defense in the league to a three-game winning streak.
Life Is Unfair
Mike Conley has never been better.
Well, like, not right this minute. Because he took a brutal knee to the back and had to leave the Memphis Grizzlies' 104-85 loss to the Charlotte Hornets. Presently, he's probably hurting.
But this season has been his best. In the 17 games he has played, Conley's on-court net rating is a team-best plus-6.5 points per 100 possessions (if you exclude Deyonta Davis' tiny 108-minute sample, which we are).
"What can I say about Mike Conley?" Grizzlies head coach David Fizdale told reporters last week. "He's getting closer and closer to the guy I want him to be; the killer that I want him to be. I'm really proud of his openness to it and that he is trying to adapt to what I want him to be."
Conley already has more 30-point games this season (three) than he's had during any year of his career. He's posting his best-ever marks from long range, scoring more, still defending...basically, he's been the main reason Memphis has looked good so far.
He couldn't help in this one, as Charlotte blew the game open during the second quarter behind a strong effort from surprise leading scorer Jeremy Lamb. In order to keep this solid season rolling, the Grizz need Conley back.
Fast.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com. Accurate through games played Nov. 28.
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