Where do the Warriors go from here? The next 20 games could decide a lot

LOS ANGELES — Rare events generate rare opportunities. It’s not common for Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy to speak during the season, but he opened another eventful day around the franchise with a Thursday morning media briefing on UCLA’s campus as the team held a shootaround on the floor above.

The subject, of course: Draymond Green’s indefinite suspension, levied by the league for his repeated acts of on-court violence. Dunleavy kept it mostly vague and outwardly supportive, generating little headline-worthy content. But he did have a sound bite, buried within the interview, that gave a bigger peak at the urgency of this moment for the reeling Warriors.

It came after he was asked how this latest Green incident and suspension will affect the bigger picture roster decisions he will make.

“The bigger impact will be how we do the next 15-20 games,” Dunleavy said. “That will determine where we go more than this specific incident or this time away from him.”

Dunleavy mentioned that window of time for a reason. At 20 games in, it will be late January, two weeks after the trade deadline and the typical place on the calendar, when front offices around the league will seriously reevaluate their current roster, their franchise path and decide if a change is necessary, or not. small or seismic.

Joe Lacob and his ownership group are currently paying a record tax bill for the 11th seed in the West. After Thursday night’s 121-113 loss to the Clippers, they are 10-14, having lost 12 of 16, falling closer to the 14th-ranked Blazers (6-17) than seventh place. If the situation is similar 20 games from now, it’s impossible to imagine Lacob and Dunleavy standing still.

Urge arrived in the form of a lineup change against the Clippers. Andrew Wiggins started the first 656 regular-season games of his career. But he’s in a deep and worsening slump, so he’s been demoted to the bench, replaced by a high-energy 6-foot-4 rookie who has racked up 8, 6, 5, 6, 11 and 7 rebounds the last six games. .

Brandin Podziemski is the team’s new starter. Jonathan Kuminga is the team’s new starting power forward. They will join Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Kevon Looney in a five-man lineup that Steve Kerr said will span a series of games before re-evaluation.

“It felt like we needed a change,” Kerr said. “Brandin gives us the extra playmaker on the floor. Great rebounder. He competes. Great defender. Then JK deserves the minutes. With Draymond out, it’s the perfect time for him to step in. It feels like a group that can really connect.”

“Changes were necessary,” Curry said. “When you’re a team struggling to find an identity, to find momentum, to win basketball games consistently, you have to experiment.”

The Warriors ran into the Clippers at the wrong time. They won six in a row. Kawhi Leonard is in a groove. He has played every game this season and has been buzzing offensively lately. He had an easy 27 points, mowing through Kuminga and Podziemski and Wiggins, who had five fouls in 22 bench minutes. James Harden finished with 28 points and 15 assists, combining with Leonard to overwhelm a Warriors defense that does not have either Gary Payton II or Green, their two most disruptive forces.

Payton eased his way back into some light court. His calf injury is improving, but he still has some time before returning to game action. Green’s absence is the definition of an unknown, and both Kerr and Curry have made it clear that a deeper exploration of Green’s issues is in order before even thinking about a return.

“He can’t do what he did,” Curry said. “He knows that. We know that. Everyone knows that. What that means to change, I think that’s the quest.”

So the Warriors must plan to pull out of this spiral without Payton or Green, leaving them undersized on the perimeter and vulnerable inside at a critical juncture in their season.

They will need more robust play from Looney, who has quietly had a sluggish start to the season. His slump isn’t as loud or devastating as Thompson’s or Wiggins’ — because Looney’s usage is much lower — but, in Green’s absence, they’ll either need Looney to start looking like the 2022 playoff version or maybe give Trayce Jackson-Davis took a longer look.

Jackson-Davis played seven minutes in Phoenix after the Green ejection and had some useful moments as a pick-and-roll lob threat. He can pass on the roll. He even came weakside to block a shot at the rim. It was the Warriors’ only block of the game. Only the Knicks have fewer blocks as a team this season. Jackson-Davis provides that rim protection element this team lacks.

But he’s also a second-round rookie with a steep learning curve. Jackson-Davis opened the second quarter against the Clippers and arguably had the worst mini-shift of his rookie season. He swung a few passes and struggled to find his footing on the interior. The Warriors were minus-11 with him on the court. Kerr did not return to him in the second half.

There were promising aspects to a third straight road loss. Thompson, two nights after the first late-game benching of his career, had his most explosive game of the season. He made eight 3s and scored 30 points. He was so hot that it might actually have been a foolish play by Curry throughout the fourth quarter when, down 1, he took a corner 3 instead of swinging it to an open and burning Thompson.

Curry went 3 of 13 from 3. He has quietly fallen from deep the last nine games, making just 35 percent from a high volume as defenses continue to swarm him with extra attention and bodies and the extra challenges of a fading dynasty continue to pile up. his shoulders.

Curry used an interesting expression during his postgame press conference in Los Angeles. While discussing this moment for the Warriors, he mentioned the term contender and then corrected it to “realistic contender,” which is the correct way to frame it these days. The Warriors look nothing like a contender right now, but the challenge for Curry over the next 20 games is to at least make it a “realistic” idea that they could become one before any drastic long-term decisions could be made.

So the question was posed: You used the term “realistic contender”. What do you need to see over the next 20 games to prove to yourself that you are a realistic contender?

“That’s a good question,” Curry said. “Um… I don’t know, man. You’ll probably have to ask me after every game. It literally takes it one game at a time, as crazy as it sounds. That’s not something we usually say. But we just talked about it in the locker room: We just need to win on Saturday. It’s okay to take small bites at this thing. I think we are obviously very far from the level we want to be. So let’s just win on Saturday.”

The Warriors face the Nets on Saturday and the Blazers in Portland on Sunday as they try to reverse this slump.

(Photo by Stephen Curry: Jessica Alcheh / USA Today)