It's the weekend before Christmas, and that means ... nine things I liked and disliked -- Christmas edition! This week, we check in on the Golden State Warriors after Draymond Green's suspension, the undeniable offensive chemistry that's developing in Milwaukee and how the MVP front-runner and a GOAT candidate keep opponents guessing.
Jump to Lowe's Things:
Warriors' adaptability | Giannis-Dame chemistry
Unpredictable Embiid/LeBron | When Celtics get it moving
Nuggets finding right pace | Quickley learning from Brunson
Suns should bottle this | Thunder's fallow periods | KAT on the tightrope
1. The adaptability of the Golden State Warriors
Good teams are more adaptable than you perceive in a crisis moment. The Warriors are 5-1 since the league announced an indefinite suspension for Draymond Green, now only two games in the loss column out of the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference.
Their defense has suffered without Green's sneering ubiquity, but their offense is humming -- slower and more risk averse, yet retaining some of the stylistic elements that have always made these Warriors stand out.
Those six games comprise six of Golden State's 11 most efficient performances, per Basketball-Reference. For a decade, Green has been the co-pilot of Golden State's beautiful game -- pushing in transition, barking at cutters, partnering with Stephen Curry in a two-man game that requires only winks and nods between them. And yet, the Warriors' offense has never suffered any drop-off when Curry plays without Green.
They have mostly forsaken the transition game; their pace over those six games would rank 29th overall.
Their half-court offense doesn't look much different. They have not defaulted to standard pick-and-roll fare. Curry's pick-and-roll volume is unchanged, per Second Spectrum. They still cut, run shooters through thickets of screens and use post-ups to activate their trademark split actions.
But there is more deliberateness. Both Curry and Chris Paul are touching the ball more, and holding it longer. There is more semi-scripted organization, less weaponized chaos:
That's a designed play -- a Curry pick-and-roll, with Paul sliding up to the elbow as a release valve. The idea is for Curry to draw a trap, ping it to Paul and let the Point God scan the floor. No one is open, so Paul makes use of his old reliable midrange jumper.
The Warriors' turnover-itis has subsided -- for now. They have only 77 cough-ups across those six games.
Oh, the chaos is still there. It is embedded in the fabric of this team.