SAN FRANCISCO — The Golden State Warriors were defeated at Chase Center for the second time in 24 hours on Sunday, falling 116-110 to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Let's dive into three in-depth takeaways from the Dubs' dispiriting loss to the surging Wolves.
Stephen Curry needs help
The Warriors shot 37-of-96 overall and 12-of-43 from deep, managing a paltry 110.0 offensive rating — juiced by the bench’s last-gasp comeback in the final minute — despite pulling down 19 of their own misses. Golden State had just 24 assists on 37 makes, too, the the result of both Curry’s teammates combining to shoot 36.6% from the field and Minnesota shrinking the floor with league-best length while laying way off the Dubs’ non-shooters.
Steve Kerr expressed confidence before tipoff that his team would finally give Curry some scoring support, appealing to years-long track records of Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins. But Thompson needed 16 shots to score as many points, and Wiggins looked as flustered offensively as he has all season en route to six points on just 3-of-7 shooting.
“No question, we need some scoring and some playmaking from elsewhere,” Kerr said on the postgame podium. “We gotta keep plugging away, and we'll go from there and see where that takes us.”
Golden State just couldn’t produce clean looks when Curry wasn’t directly involved in the action, either shooting through layers of arms himself or drawing enough defensive attention to only briefly free up teammates. Curry knew it, too. As the Wolves extended their lead to double-digits with a dominant third quarter, he spent many possessions pointedly forcing the issue, understandably lacking confidence other Dubs could make Minnesota pay.
“It does feel like everything's kinda tough to come by in terms of creating good looks,” Curry said after the game. “But that's not something that we feel like is unfixable.”
Thompson and Wiggins are bound to play better. The Wolves own the league’s stingiest defense, with arguably the best interior and wing defender in basketball and impressive positional size and athleticism across the roster. The Warriors didn’t have it’s A-game, and Minnesota is an especially tough matchup for them. As losses to playoff teams with quality defenses mount, though, it’s officially time to worry about the state of Golden State’s offense.
Warriors still searching for workable lineups
Golden State's vaunted starting five entered Sunday's action sporting a -13.9 net rating. While red-hot opponent three-point shooting—which will definitely cool off as the season progresses and sample size increases—accounts for at least a portion of that unit's defensive issues, the same issues that have been plaguing it throughout 2023-24 reared their ugly head again on Sunday night. The Dubs' starting lineup was only outscored by four points on the whole, but shot 5-of-19 from the field and registered just eight minutes of court time—over five less than average coming into the game.
The ongoing labors of Thompson and Wiggins factored in there, but what loomed larger against the Wolves were the spacing shackles Golden State wore offensively with both Draymond Green and Kevon Looney on the floor. Kerr adjusted by deploying Dario Saric for a season-high 27 minutes, then went with Jonathan Kuminga next to Curry, Thompson, Wiggins and Green for gut-check time midway through the fourth quarter, his team down big.
That quintet barely put a dent into the Timberwolves' lead before the Dubs' reserves made the final score more respectable. Golden State's all-bench lineup was outscored by nine points, with Chris Paul and Jonathan Kuminga, especially, bothered by Minnesota's length and defensive activity. Moses Moody went just 1-of-6, his lone make coming on a rare pull-up 20-footer over the outstretched arms of McDaniels.
Kerr just couldn't find a group that gave the Warriors the necessary combination of spacing, defensive teeth, size and athleticism. The lineup of Curry, Thompson, Wiggins, Kuminga and Saric was deployed in the first quarter after having played just seven total possessions this season, per Cleaning the Glass. Searching for answers, the Dubs eventually went to Paul, Curry and Thompson with Saric and Looney up front—what has to be the least athletic combination of five rotation players in the league.
Golden State doesn't have a dynamic secondary shot-creator who threatens defenses from all three levels of the floor, drawing defensive rotations that consistently lead to opportunities for others. Its collective lack of length and explosiveness—among the top-six, most notably—is even more glaring. There's only so many buttons Kerr can push to overcome those roster deficiencies. He tried just about all of them on Sunday, never landing on a lineup that seemed equipped to deal with the Wolves on either side of the ball.
The give and take of Dario Saric
Saric fared better than anyone in the rotation but Curry against Minnesota, finishing with 11 points and a team-high 10 rebounds. He fought Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns like hell on the glass, also managing a couple tough layups among the trees inside. He went just 1-of-4 on triples, but the space the threat of his jumper provides Golden State is extremely important even when shots aren't falling—especially versus teams that play two bigs like the Wolves and Cleveland Cavaliers.
But Saric just isn't a rim-protector, and isn't quick enough to keep the ball out of the paint when directly attacked one-on-one even by opposing bigs. Though it's hardly uncommon for Anthony Edwards to out-muscle centers on the drive, Saric's barely-there resistance—best effort be damned—on the play below has been plenty commonplace this season, too.
Towns went a perfect 3-of-3 during Minny's decisive third quarter, scoring nine of his 21 points. All of those makes came on successive possessions, Towns running basic high ball screen action with Mike Conley, putting Saric in his crosshairs after popping to the arc.
Switching didn't work, either. The Warriors would be best served here by Thompson going under Towns' angled screen, but that risks leaving Saric on an island guarding Conley, who'd have turned the corner with enough space to launch a triple or speed to get downhill.
Signing Saric for the minimum is already an unmitigated win for the Dubs. He's a rock-solid third big, and a relative bargain for that price. But when pressed into a bigger role by Looney's (quiet) ineffectiveness, foul trouble or injury, good teams will find ways to exploit him defensively, just like Towns and Minnesota did on Sunday.
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