Player grades: Warriors vs. Raptors

Assessing every Golden State player’s performance in the team’s 120-105 win over Toronto.

The Golden State Warriors continued their recent road dominance on Friday, upending the Toronto Raptors 120-105 to push their road winning streak to eight games. They’ll get a chance to cap off a perfect four-game road trip on Sunday when they visit arguably the best team in the NBA, the Boston Celtics. A win would be meaningful, but 3-1 road trips are the backbone of successful seasons.

While the Dubs were facing a lackluster Raptors team, it wasn’t an easy game to win. Not only was Golden State on the back half of a back-to-back, but travel issues after Thursday’s win over the New York Knicks meant the Warriors didn’t make it to Canada until eight in the morning. They worked through it, and notched a win to take into the weekend.

Let’s grade the players. As always, grades are based on my expectations for each player, with a “B” grade representing the average performance.

Note: True-shooting percentage (TS) is a scoring efficiency metric that accounts for threes and free throws. Entering Friday’s games, league-average TS was 58.1%.

Draymond Green

28 minutes, 6 points, 13 rebounds, 5 assists, 1 steal, 2 blocks, 3 turnovers, 2 fouls, 1-for-4 shooting, 4-for-4 free throws, 52.1% TS, +10

Like most of the Dubs, Green got off to a slow and slightly chaotic start. And, like most of the Dubs, he settled into a high quality game. The Warriors continue to out-rebound opponents (57-47 in this game), and Green being able to more than hold his own as an undersized center is a huge reason why.

Grade: B+
Post-game bonus: Led the team in rebounds.

Jonathan Kuminga

27 minutes, 24 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 turnovers, 1 foul, 9-for-19 shooting, 0-for-2 threes, 6-for-6 free throws, 55.5% TS, +5

This game was kind of emblematic of Kuminga’s career. He really, really struggled in the opening minutes, with a few hectic offensive possessions and some blown defensive coverages. Steve Kerr called back-to-back timeouts early in the first quarter to yell at his players, and Kuminga seemed to be the primary recipient of Kerr’s ire. A lengthy stint on the bench followed.

And when Kuminga returned, he did so with a vengeance. He mercilessly attacked the rim and, had this been a standard NBA game with a quick whistle, he might have shot 16 free throws instead of six. He was equally aggressive defensively and in chasing rebounds.

Awful start, but a very good game.

Grade: B+

Steph Curry

30 minutes, 25 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 turnovers, 2 fouls, 9-for-22 shooting, 7-for-15 threes, 56.8% TS, +12

Curry, like Kuminga, would have had a much more efficient night with a more lenient whistle. Instead, he had to do his work with live defenders, as he didn’t get a single free throw.

Not the most notable game, but Curry did have a lot of energy when the team looked lethargic. And his buckets in the first and third quarters were huge.

Grade: B
Post-game bonus: Led the team in points and assists.

Klay Thompson

30 minutes, 14 points, 7 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals, 2 turnovers, 2 fouls, 5-for-13 shooting, 4-for-9 threes, 53.8% TS, 0 plus/minus

Klay returned to the starting lineup with both Andrew Wiggins and Brandin Podziemski sidelined (the former for personal reasons, the latter due to a knee contusion). His start didn’t exactly make it look like he should be returning to the opening five any time soon, but he turned his game around as the night went on. There were definitely a few poor shots, but Thompson played a solid all-around game.

Grade: B-

Moses Moody

32 minutes, 17 points, 5 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals, 2 blocks, 1 turnover, 1 foul, 7-for-13 shooting, 3-for-5 threes, 65.4% TS, +17

First, an admission. During Thursday’s grades, I gave Moody a decent but not great grade, acknowledging his good defense but knocking him for shooting inefficiently. I was justifiably called out in the comment section for not putting enough emphasis on just how good Moody’s defense was on All-Star Jalen Brunson.

Those comments were correct. Moody deserved a better grade and, thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long to get a second chance. The third-year guard was clearly the Warriors best player in the opening minutes ... the only one who didn’t look like he’d been on that delayed red-eye flight. He made a triple on the first possession of the game, and scored the team’s first seven points.

But it was his energy that really stood out, in all facets of the game. He was flying around the court on defense and racing back on offense. He was aggressive rebounding and frequently attacked the rim. Like Kuminga and Curry, he could have had an even nicer statistical night with a more normal whistle.

Just a spectacular game — one of the best of his career.

Grade: A+
Post-game bonus: Best plus/minus on the team.

Dario Šarić

6 minutes, 2 points, 2 assists, 1 turnover, 1-for-2 shooting, 0-for-1 threes, 50.0% TS, -2

Not a very good Šarić game and, for the first time in a while, it impacted his minutes. He didn’t get his standard second half run and, with the Warriors maintaining their fourth quarter lead for the first time in a while, that rotation change might stick.

Grade: C-
Post-game bonus: Worst plus/minus on the team.

Kevon Looney

10 minutes, 0 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, 1 block, 1 turnover, 1 foul, 0-for-1 shooting, 0-for-2 free throws, 0.0% TS, +2

Never fun to miss all of your shots and all of your free throws, but Looney was very solid otherwise, doing a little bit here and a little bit there when thrown into action.

Grade: B

Trayce Jackson-Davis

16 minutes, 9 points, 4 rebounds, 3 fouls, 3-for-4 shooting, 3-for-4 free throws, 78.1% TS, +8

Two things: Jackson-Davis is going to have a very long, very good NBA career, and I hope that Chris Paul is still on the Warriors next year just so I can keep watching those two running the pick-and-roll together.

Also, this was fun:

Grade: A

Chris Paul

24 minutes, 13 points, 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, 1 turnover, 2 fouls, 5-for-10 shooting, 3-for-6 threes, 65.0% TS, +5

There is pretty clearly no rust for CP3. He returned this week after nearly two months on the sidelines, and he looks like he hasn’t missed a beat. He’s working well with the starters and completely stabilizing the bench unit. His defense was sneaky good in this game, but mostly he just did a masterful job orchestrating the offense.

Grade: A

Gary Payton II

14 minutes, 4 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, 2-for-4 shooting, 0-for-1 threes, 50.0% TS, 0 plus/minus

A kind of standard fare GPII game, which is always a good thing. Sometimes I’m just blown away by how acrobatic he is when he rebounds the basketball. He fully contorts himself around bigger players to snatch the ball out of the air.

Grade: B

Jerome Robinson

1 minute, 0 points, +5

Just a little garbage time for Robinson, though the cameras caught him working on the refs a few times at timeouts, so he’s playing a part even from the sidelines!

Grade: Incomplete

Lester Quiñones

23 minutes, 6 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist, 2-for-6 shooting, 1-for-5 threes, 1-for-2 free throws, 43.6% TS, +13

This is the role Q has going forward. He won’t play much, if at all, when the team is healthy. But when they’re down a guard or two, he’ll step into a big role, with his teammates and the coaching staff trusting him fully. He doesn’t make a lot of mistakes, he’s constantly in motion, he plays quality defense, and he’s silky smooth.

Grade: B+

Friday’s inactives: Usman Garuba, Brandin Podziemski, Pat Spencer, Andrew Wiggins