How the Golden State Warriors Can Improve in the Post Mark Jackson Era

Despite the turmoil, there’s no doubt the Warriors had a great season, even though some were disappointed with their improvement after beating a great Denver team in six games and pushing the San Antonio Spurs to the brink of elimination in the 2013 PLayoffs. The general feel around the NBA for much of the season seemed to be that they could do a lot better, given their personnel. Among fans and pundits, Golden State is a surprisingly divisive team– some people considered them legit contenders, while others just as entertaining three-ball team not ready to make the leap– and the truth is probably somewhere in between. They are still a young team and should not be discouraged by a first round playoffs exit, especially considering that they were missing Andrew Bogut and got caught in a brutal western conference playoff field.

The Surprisingly Mediocre Offense

Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are the best shooting backcourt statistically in the history of the NBA. Not only percentage wise but together they attempted 14.5 three-pointers a game and shot over 41%, a combination of volume and accuracy that is unprecedented. David Lee is a wonderful offensive player, a 20 -10 just waiting to happen and is currently averaged 18.2 points a game. Andre Iguodala is a former All-Star and does all the little things on offense. He is a wonderful passer, cutter and can work ball handling duties so that Curry can focus on coming off screens. Iggy might just be the most underrated player in the league. Bogut is an elite finisher around the rim with a nifty little floater/hook game. Bogut and Lee are fantastic passers and are experts at making passes to find each other, shooters or cutters.

Yet Golden State is was only ranked 12th in offensive rating at 105.3 points per 100 possessions this season, per NBA.com. How can this be possible? You would think that this team could just show up and be a top-5 offense. They have the personnel to be the single best offense in the league. Curry is a force onto himself on the offensive end and completely changes the way your entire defense is constructed.

Here Curry gets a screen on the wing. Conventional ways of defending this go out the window with Curry, you literally have to double him on every pick and roll, leading to five on fours when he makes the pass to the roller. The Clippers had a lot of trouble with this in the first round, especially with David Lee as the roll man, since he can finish with either hand or move the ball to the next guy. Again, teams are forced to change everything about their defensive schemes against Curry, since he can shoot the ball off the dribble from anywhere on the court with just the tiniest sliver of space on a level far better than anyone else in the entire NBA. Guarding a basketball team that employs Stephen Curry is a nightmare, and forces a team down a rabbit hole of defensive rotations, leaving room for open shots and driving lanes when the ball is moving well.

Coach Mark Jackson has implemented some nice play calls. Klay and Steph both get tons of screens that lead to open shots, and my personal favorites are these awesome Andrew Bogut lobs that happen at least once a game, where Bogut fakes setting a screen and cuts back door for wonderful alley-oops.

None that is rocket science, and all of it is genuinely good stuff, but the problem is that good defensive teams can stifle your first, second and third options, and that is where the Warriors tend to get into trouble. The ball hasn’t moved always as well as one might imagine, they are an isolation heavy team, ranked only behind the New York Knicks in how much of their offense comes on isolations (10.1%), per Synergy Sports. Too often after the initial action fails they end up running a basic pick and roll with the other guys standing around doing nothing, or isolations for Curry, Thompson and even Jordan Crawford(Yikes!). Basically possessions turned into just guys jacking it up for quarters at a time without a care in the world, a major reason why the Warriors often found themselves in early deficits. This really hurts since they nearly always have tons of passing and creativity on the floor. Such stagnancy is a huge problem and must be fixed next season if Golden State truly fancies themselves a contender. There should be no excuse not to be able to get good looks every time down the floor with this material. Jackson did a lot of great things for the Warriors, but for them to be ranked 12th on offense is ridiculous.

Iguodala is already being criticized for flaming out in the playoffs, but consider this: The Warriors best lineup of Curry, Thompson, Iguodala, Lee and Bogut played with a net rating(differential between offense and defense per 100 possessions) of +15.4 over the course of the regular season, to put that in context, the Spurs were the best in the league this year with a differential of +8.1. Funnily enough replace Iggy with Barnes and the Warriors are one of the worst teams in the league and their offense would rank 29th, with only Philly being worse(so basically worse than any real NBA team). The Barnes lineup played over 300 minutes this year, and can’t be dismissed as a case of small sample size, the Warriors really have to figure out a way to get him back on track. Here is where Jackson clearly failed, Barnes was great in the 2013 Playoffs, and there’s no way he should be struggling like this. Especially in the first half of the season, Barnes had too large a burden with the second unit, and was forced into bein a primary option for tough post ups, isolations and pick and rolls, it really feels like having such a huge role with the second unit took him out of rhythm and he just couldn’t find himself again.

Another interesting note about the offense is that the Warriors ranked 24th in free throws made this season. Generally it’s really difficult to have an elite offense doing so (the exception here being the Spurs). Per NBA.com the list of top 100 in free throws made per game has only three members of the Warriors, and one of them is Jermaine O’Neal(95th). That is a problem. Beyond that Iguodala and Bogut both really struggle at the line and the Warriors surprisingly only rank 19th in free throw percentage. So no one gets there and they don’t quite make them like you would think.

Curry is a fine finisher at the rim but players of his usage rate absolutely HAVE to get to the line more. Even though Curry is good at the basket he evades contact on too many layups and throws the ball up ridiculously high off the rim, while contorting his body and reducing his angle to the backboard. Sometimes he should be more willing to take the contact. Thompson and Iguodala also HAVE to get into the lane and draw fouls more often. Thompson’s mediocre true shooting percentage(takes into account free throws and threes) is a direct indication of the fact that he almost never gets to the line, despite him being an amazingly efficient shooter.

The Future

The one thing that Mark Jackson did the best was to instill a defensive mindset to this Warriors theme, it would have been all too easy to just turn this into a run and gun team, doing well on offense but being at best mediocre on defense. The notation that “defense wins championships” is actually true statistically, it’s much easier to win a title with a so-so offense and great defense than a great offense and a “blaah” defense. The Warriors ranked a 3rd in defensive rating this season, better than perennial powerhouses such as the Spurs and the Thunder, that is really impressive. Just in the starting lineup they play three absolute superb defenders in Bogut, Iguodala and Thompson. All of this is amazing and Jackson won’t get enough credit for it.

Stats can’t describe the impact of players really buying into what Mark Jackson was selling, the players obviously adored him, and whoever is the next coach will have a tough time matching Jackson in that department. However there are clearly some scheme things the Warriors can do differently, mainly in how patient they are in generating shots. Jackson let Curry basically shoot it whenever he wanted after the halfcourt line, which is not horrible, but the margin of error at the top is just so ridiculously to give back even an inch of advantage to the opponent. Every shot counts and you have to be able to maximize each possession, and in this brutal western conference the smallest things can literally be the difference between a first-round exit and championship run.

The Warriors are locked into this team, they don’t really have draft picks to spare after dumping some contracts to the Jazz and with Thompson’s extensions looming they are going to be capped out for a while. The only trade chip they have is Harrison Barnes, who still many people around the league seem to like. Perhaps if some team is high on David lee they could package those two in some sort of 2 for 1 deal. Being locked into this team is not a bad thing, they have good players at all starting positions and at least not a completely terrible bench, especially if Barnes can figure it out.

Now comes the hardest step for any team, which is going from good to truly great, and look, this is probably over simplifying it a bit too much but the Warriors were ranked 3rd in defense and 12th on offense this season. Isn’t it ridiculously easy to imagine this team as being ranked near the top of the league on offense? If you looked at the stats during the middle of next season, would you be at all surprised to see them ranked 2nd for example? Probably not, and if they can keep up this level of defense while getting better on offense they should be, at least in a pure in a statistical sense, one of the favorites to win the title, if not THE favorite. Being top 5 on both sides of the floor is basically a giant sign on your head saying: “Our season is a failure if we don’t win the title”. It honestly doesn’t feel like the Warriors are that far away.