ONCE THE TEAM’S charter plane reached cruising altitude, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr and his staff huddled together in the coaches’ section located in the middle of the plane.
Somewhere between the Phoenix desert and Denver’s Rocky Mountains on Monday afternoon, Kerr and his lieutenants crunched analytic numbers, dissected combinations and settled on some lineup changes.
But then Kerr got word that Draymond Green was going to be out for Tuesday’s game against the Denver Nuggets, just the latest jolt of turbulence to hit the slumping Warriors.
“We made some decisions on the plane that went out the window with Draymond’s absence,” Kerr lamented.
After starting the season 12-3 and looking like they were in cruise control with blowout wins in five of their first six victories, the Warriors suddenly dropped into a five-game losing slide before a much-needed win over the Houston Rockets on Thursday without Green and Stephen Curry.
Until Thursday, Golden State had been unable to hold onto double-digit second-half leads, squandering a 17-point lead to the San Antonio Spurs, an 18-point lead to the Brooklyn Nets and an 11-point lead to the Nuggets. The Warriors also had to play two games without Curry and two games without Green due to injuries in their last four games.
Two weeks ago, the Warriors were in sole possession of first place in the West. On Friday, they head into the first of consecutive meetings against the Minnesota Timberwolves (10 p.m. ET, ESPN) stuck in the Western Conference top 10.
What had been a masterfully orchestrated 11-to-12-man rotation morphed into a 13-man log jam in Saturday’s loss to the Phoenix Suns. Kerr was left searching for any slump-busting lineups he could find, and wondered if it was time to think about shortening his rotation.
After using a 10-man rotation for the second straight game, the Warriors finally snapped the slide.
“With everybody healthy, the strength of the team is the depth,” Kerr said before facing Houston on Thursday. “Hopefully we’ll prove this without Steph and Draymond — I think we’ll be able to get through stretches of injuries because we have so much depth on our roster.
“[But] I think [our] weakness is almost the same thing. There’s very little clarity for me and the staff as to who we should play every night down the stretch. We probably have had different lineups closing the game for the last five games. So good and bad with that. But it does help when you get some separation and you know for sure kind of who your group is. We’re not sure what that means yet.”
Steve Kerr lays into the referees late in the Warriors’ loss after Christian Braun appeared to signal for a timeout when the Nuggets had none remaining.
AS THE FINAL BUZZER blared in Denver after the Warriors fumbled an 11-point lead in the final 6:13, the typically calm Kerr was shouting expletives at Tyler Ford’s crew, who he believed missed Christian Braun signaling for a timeout after securing a loose ball with 1.9 seconds left, despite the Nuggets having no timeouts.
But that’s not the only thing that has upset the zen of one of Phil Jackson’s most successful disciples. For the first time during the losing streak, Kerr let his frustrations show as the Warriors failed to close out another game, falling to 5-6 in clutch time games this season. He loved the effort, but not the turnovers in the third quarter or the number of fouls.
So the championship coach did something he rarely does in his postgame press conference — he criticized one of his favorite players, Brandin Podziemski. While Kerr told Podziemski all of this privately, the coach let it be known publicly that the second-year guard drew his ire over two poor turnovers, one of which was a lob attempt on a fastbreak in traffic that Kerr described as “frankly insane” and a couple of fouls on shooters, including one that gave Michael Porter Jr. three foul shots.
“Pod’s a hell of a player,” Kerr said after the loss. “But he needs to be a smart player.”
Kerr said he sees his players trying too hard sometimes. Not even Curry has been immune. Dealing with bilateral pain in his knee — a condition he admits is new and has kept him out of two of the past four games as the Warriors manage his health — the superstar missed a wide open left-handed driving layup at one point in Denver before finishing with 24 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds.
“I’m not going to try to find positives,” Curry said after the loss at Denver. “We’re all playing hard and all committed to trying to get out of this hole. We have a lot of great guys in the locker room. We have a lot of positive vibes, but nobody wants to sit and find positives [in the middle of] a losing streak.
“It’s kind of just find a way to claw your way out… we got to win.”
A major part of the Warriors’ identity in their championship years, and this season, has been one of their mottos: Strength in numbers. Kerr has called this roster perhaps his deepest yet.
Kerr has used Curry, Green, Andrew Wiggins, Podziemski, Jonathan Kuminga, Buddy Hield, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Kevon Looney, Kyle Anderson, Moses Moody, Gary Payton II and Lindy Waters III an average of 12 minutes or more per game.
The Warriors have 12 players — excluding De’Anthony Melton who was lost for the season with a left ACL tear on Nov. 12 — averaging 10 or more minutes this season and qualify for the minutes-per-game leaderboard. That would be tied for the most qualified players to average 10-plus minutes in a season since minutes were first tracked in 1951-52 according to ESPN Research.
This season, there are 10 instances of a team playing at least 12 players for 10 or more minutes each. The Warriors account for half of those games.
Championship teams like the 2001-02 Lakers and 2013-14 Spurs utilized 12-man rotations. So did the 2012-13 Spurs team that lost in the Finals.
But 21 games into the season, Kerr is still trying to piece his 12-man puzzle together. His most used lineup is Curry, Green, Wiggins, Waters and Jackson-Davis, which is a plus-14 over 71 minutes together, according to ESPN Research. With Melton out for the season, Kerr has found success when Curry, Green, Wiggins and Hield share the floor. The four are a plus-52.
The other thing the Warriors can use is a hot Hield. One of the team’s key offseason acquisitions, Hield scored 20 or more points in six of his first seven games — all wins. He looked like the perfect replacement for Klay Thompson.
But after scoring 20 in a win at Washington on Nov. 4, Hield did not reach 20 points in the next 14 games. He logged 16 minutes in two losses during the losing streak, his fewest minutes in a game since playing 14 minutes in the season-opening 36-point win over Portland.
Kuminga and Moody, two key pieces for the Warriors’ future, have had to be patient at times with their minutes. During a four-game stretch in mid-November before Kuminga missed two games due to illness, the forward played fewer than 20 minutes in three consecutive games. The Warriors, though, went 3-1 during that four-game stretch.
But Kuminga’s patience paid off this week. He played 29 minutes and a season-high 33 minutes, respectively, in the last two games. With Curry and Green out on Thursday, Kuminga had one of his best games, scoring a career-high 33 points, 14 coming in the fourth quarter. Kuminga delivered when the Warriors needed big baskets, scoring five of the points in the final 1:04 of a tight game.
Kerr has said he has to find a way to get Kuminga more minutes, while also having to play Green and Looney.
But the common thread is Curry, Green and Wiggins at the center of the lineup. The trio is a plus-89 in lineups on the floor this season. That is the best plus-minus for any Warriors trio this season.
“Anytime you’re losing, you need to figure something out,” Green said after the Thunder beat the Warriors, 105-101, in San Francisco when Curry was out with pain in his knees on Nov. 27. “I don’t think it’s a matter of something’s been lost. We know what our identity is as a team and you have to stay as close to that as possible throughout the course of an 82-game season.
“You’re going to hit rough patches… Nobody’s panicking.”
EARLIER THIS SEASON, a friend texted Kerr after he saw how the coach was playing a 12-man rotation.
“Hey, 12 guys, it’s a real democracy,” the friend texted.
“As soon as we lose, it’s going to be communism,” Kerr texted back.
As he was searching for any combinations he could find to help break the losing streak in Phoenix, Kerr ended up playing so many players, he lost count and initially thought he played 14 against old friend Kevin Durant and the Suns.
It probably felt that way because Kerr used all 13 players available to him that night. He started Curry, Podziemski, Wiggins, Green and Jackson-Davis. And he subbed in Kuminga, Hield, Looney, Payton, Anderson, Moody, Waters and two-way player Pat Spencer, who logged eight minutes, four coming in the fourth quarter as Kerr looked for a spark.
Curry even noted how unique it is to play so many guys.
“We’ve come in with the strength in numbers philosophy and you want it to work and you want it to prove itself correct,” Curry said. “The only thing I’ll say is it is hard for anybody to know or try to get a rhythm and know what you’re going to be asked to do [with so many playing] … We are a unique team.
“Do we need to shorten it? We probably need to be a little bit more predictable on a night-to-night basis so guys can get a little bit of a rhythm that shortening one or two guys maybe.”
This depth, however, has allowed Kerr to keep Curry’s minutes down to 30.2 per game — his fewest in a season outside of 2011-12 and 2019-20 when he played a total of 26 and five games, respectively, due to injuries. Green’s average minutes are at 28.5.
Kerr has made it clear that he and the training staff will have to make sure they keep Curry and Green healthy and fresh.
The deep rotation of fresh bodies also has allowed new defensive coordinator Jerry Stackhouse to blitz and double team more. While the defense has struggled in fourth quarters during the losing streak, Stackhouse says whatever wrinkles opponents are successfully throwing at the Warriors defense is something they can study now and improve on for later in the season.
“We know that it’s a long season,” Stackhouse told ESPN on Sunday. “We’re not discouraged about what has happened yet. Obviously it sucks, the San Antonio game, the Brooklyn game felt like those were winnable games for us. Maybe one thing here or there and we’re feeling a lot better than we’re feeling right now. But you got to feel the sting of losing [these consecutive games].”
In Denver, Kerr played just 10 Warriors for the first time this season, leaving Waters, Spencer and Gui Santos on his bench while Green sat out due to left calf tightness. Kerr stuck with 10 again on Thursday — Waters and Santos sat — and the group rewarded him with the streak-busting win despite his stars sitting out. Kerr said the plan is for Curry to return against Minnesota on Friday. And he said it’s “possible” Green could be back as well.
He needs his “stabilizing forces” back. Golden State is in a treacherous stretch that includes games against Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Denver, Houston, Minnesota and Memphis. And that doesn’t include the NBA Cup quarterfinal match against the Rockets on Wednesday, which would send them to Las Vegas for the semis if they win.
Kerr would love to get back to playing 11 or 12 players. But first, he has to get the Warriors back to safe cruising altitude again.
“I just feel like as a coach, you kind of know your team and where the vibe is and are you competing?” Kerr said before facing Houston. “Are the guys supporting each other? And the answer to that is yes, unequivocally, with our group. While we’ve hit this little stretch where we’ve lost games, we’re playing hard, we’re competing, we’ve given ourselves a chance to win. We just haven’t closed, so we got to get better with closing.
“But big picture-wise, I love this team. I feel good about where we are.”
ESPN Research’s Matt Williams contributed to this report.