Analysis: Is the Warriors’ poor shooting an outlier or a trend?

In the first 12 games of the season, the Golden State Warriors have shown what makes them contenders, and what might keep them from contending.

They won five of their first seven on the road, easily performing better away from home than last season. They did it with grit, poise and otherworldly performances by Stephen Curry. They’ve also won with the bench either maintaining leads or spearheading comebacks in the non-Curry minutes.

They’ve also shown why they aren’t fully solidified as contenders thus far. In their six losses, the Warriors’ lack of size has been a painful highlight but not the most concerning. It’s in their struggles to score.

Golden State is now 6-6 and in the middle of a four-game losing streak. In three of these games, they shot under 40 percent from the field. Granted, it’s early in the season and it’s a small sample size but I’m wondering if this is more of a slump and it’s just an outlier, or if it is the result of how they are being defended. There’s a case to be made for both instances.

Case For An Outlier

Shooting slumps are inexplicable and random. A player can have the same mechanics and looks as always and still can’t buy a bucket. It happens to the best of them sometimes.

Remember Curry’s month-and-a-half-long slump in the 2021-22 season, and the panic that it ensued? Do you also remember how he worked himself out of it?

The collective shooting woes of the Warriors have a heightened sense of concern to them because they are an undersized perimeter-based team constructed under the presumption that the offensive weapons are consistently efficient. The problem is that the only one that’s been consistent is Curry. Only rookie guard Brandin Podziemski has scored more than 20 points in a game among the rest of the roster.

However, among the six losses, the sub-40 percent shooting has only been in the season opener against the Phoenix Suns (35.6%), the first games against the Minnesota Timberwolves (38.5%) and Cleveland Cavaliers (36.2%) respectively. Against the Nuggets, the Warriors shot 43 percent from the field. In the rematch against the Cavs, they shot 41.1 percent.

In some of the losses, there have been examples of the Warriors generating quality shots but just not making them.

The staple ‘tic tac toe’ play is a bucket nine times out of 10. Draymond Green’s pass to a cutting Gary Payton II is on point, but he doesn’t convert the layup here. The opportunity was there but the Warriors couldn’t capitalize.

This midrange jumper by Andrew Wiggins is a shot that’s available and a shot that he’d make more than he’d miss. Wiggins started the season slow offensively and he’s trying to push through the rut that he’s in.

Wiggins isn’t the only one playing through a slump. Klay Thompson is averaging 14.6 points per game on 42.3 percent from the field and an uncharacteristic 34.2 percent from deep. Luckily for both players, these are struggles in November instead of March or April.  There is time to progress to the mean. If and when Thompson and Wiggins return to form offensively, the team collectively will also and these three games will be viewed as the random off nights that they should be.

Impact Of Opposing Defenses

Granted, most of the missed shots in this stretch are shots that the Warriors usually make. However, opposing defenses have a role in these percentages as well.

Opposing defenses have a tendency to face-guard and top-lock Curry. While doing this, they also deny and take away the passes Golden State likes to make when Curry relocates for an open shot. A perfect example of this is during the Denver game when Nuggets guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was guarding Curry. Golden State actually shot the ball decently in this loss at 43 percent, but Curry was inefficient by his standards scoring 21 points on 7-for-15 shooting and 4-for-10 from deep. Caldwell-Pope’s defense in the first half was a huge part of it.

While defenses are top-locking Curry, they will sag off and concede open looks to non-floor spacers like Green, Kevon Looney, and even a struggling Wiggins.

Another tendency in these games is the ability for opponents to use their offense as defense. The Warriors are a small team, and they make it a point to defend and fight for rebounds and second-chance points. They may out-rebound the opposition like in the second Cavs game, against the Nuggets and the first Timberwolves game, but it is at the cost of having tired legs and being worn down as the game progresses.

At this point in the game, it’s late in the fourth quarter, and the Warriors are trying to rally from eight points down.

Wiggins misses a midrange jumper that he would usually make. The miss results in a transition basket for Cleveland. Notice that the miss is a low bounce and it almost rolls to the other side of the rim. It’s an indication of tired legs because the shot isn’t getting enough lift off the release. The Cavs continued to use their size advantage and forced the Warriors to expel the energy they had on defense as they rolled to a 115-104 victory.

At 6-6, the Warriors will progress to the mean. They will not have many more sub-40 percent shooting nights but the way that the Warriors are defended will always be a trend worth watching during the season.