Steph Curry & Warriors SHAKY in blowout loss to OKC Thunder & Shai Gilgeous-Alexander | NBA Reaction

Steph Curry & Warriors SHAKY in blowout loss to OKC Thunder & Shai Gilgeous-Alexander | NBA Reaction

All right, Warriors Thunder. Really bad combination uh for a blowout in the sense that you have the Champs playing some of their best basketball right now. And then you have a Warriors team that’s been in kind of like a weeksl long funk that’s been fueled by a brutal schedule with a lot of backtobacks, an illness that took Steph Curry out of the lineup for a while, and a teamwide inability to win on the road. And the Warriors hung around early mainly because they were turning OKC over and they were getting out in transition off of it. But OKC grabbed the lead late in the first quarter and basically just ran away with that game. It was never even really competitive. Anybody who was watching that game would have seen pretty quickly the gigantic chasm and shot quality between the two teams. Like ultimately Sheay was just doing a better job of breaking down Golden State’s defense than Steph was doing of breaking down Oklahoma City’s defense. And that ultimately was the dynamic that was kind of trickling down to every other part of the game. I thought Shay was doing a fantastic job of penetrating the first line of Golden State’s defense. A lot of like rejecting ball screens and uh so that he could avoid Draymond and get downhill. Um he was making very good kickouts. I thought it was a great floor game type of night from Shay. I think he had 11 assists which was his second double-digit assist game of the season. Oklahoma City got 15 unguarded catch and shoot jump shot looks compared to just 10 for Golden State. So, a pretty significant gap in shot quality. And Shay was also scoring in all sorts of the usual Shay ways like he was hitting step back threes early in the game against some soft coverage. The Thunder were doing a lot of attacking Quinton Post early in the game through Shay and also through uh Cet in one ons. And Shay ended up hitting a little step back three against Quinton Post on the left wing. He was also getting all the way into the paint. He was hitting his little mid-range looks. All just the classic Shay stuff. 28 points in just 28 minutes of action last night. Again, I thought he had a very good floor game. He looked very in control all night against a great Warriors defense and was just consistently compromising them, making quick decisions, breaking that defense down so that his role players could capitalize on that attention. And then on the other side, I just Steph just wasn’t very good last night at all. And I was worried about him in this game. Um because he’d been out for a little while with his illness and so much of his game is predicated on conditioning. The conditioning to consistently have his speed as he’s running around to the conditioning so that he gets that he gets good lift on his jump shot after dribble combinations. And obviously your conditioning is going to be affected when you have a break and it’s going to be exacerbated when you’ve been ill, right? when you have an upper respiratory infection the way that he did. And then you combine that with the fact that Oklahoma City is just such a difficult defense to score on under any circumstances. And to kind of like put it all together, it’s a bad matchup for the Warriors. I’ve talked about this with Steph and the Warriors for a little while, but like he can cause real problems for big and slow teams because of his movement and his ability to pull bigs out to the level of screens. It just puts defenses into rotation and then you’re a faster team. And so if you’re ahead of them already in rotation and you’ve got a speed advantage and you’ve got a read and react playmaking advantage, you can really pick teams apart. But this is a very very very different Oklahoma City team. Kase Wallace guarded Steph for most of the game and he was basically in lock step with him as a very quick guard that can stay with him. Lost him on a couple back cuts early in the game, but for the most part was able to hang with him. And then there are no weak links for his him to attack. If he gets any guard in a transition cross match, it’s also a good defender. If he gets any guard switches with the guardguard screen, they’re also a great defender. And then Cadet and Isaiah Hartenstein are both very mobile at the center position. They are not big and slow, they are big and fast. And so it just caused a lot of problems for that Golden State offense. Even when Steph managed to draw two to the ball, whether it was through classic Steph gravity or if he, you know, there were several sequences where he’d come off a ball screen and they’d come up to the level and basically chase him and he would kind of drag the two defenders with him and then try to get rid of the ball. I thought Oklahoma City did a wonderful job rotating out of that. There was a classic example of it in uh in the second half, early second half. Steph comes off of a ball screen on the left side of Quinton Post and he gets kind of down to like the left block extended out towards more like the short corner and he brings two guys with him on the play. Quinton Post pops to the top of the key. I believe it was Cadet was the guy that was on uh on U staff if I remember correctly and Isaiah Hartenstein they they throw the kick out pass to Quinton Post. Isaiah Hartinstein flies out in rotation, chases Quinton Post off the line. Post drives into the lane. AJ Mitchell is guarding I I I think it was Pajki. I can’t remember who it was on the on the weak side of the floor. Might have been Kaminga. But uh uh AJ Mitchell ends up rotating out to the corner after Quinton Post makes the kickout pass and bam, the advantage is gone. Steph comes off a screen, draws two, makes the right read, but OKC is just so fast in rotation that the advantage is gone. And all of a sudden, everything you just did uh was for nothing. And so there was even like a stretch there in the second quarter where like you could tell that Steph was getting flustered by just the ability for them to rotate out of ball screens. And so he started looking to attack their guards one-on-one. And he took like three or four pretty questionable like tough step back jump shots in a row in that second quarter and missed every single one of them. And you could tell too that he wasn’t getting great separation. It wasn’t getting great like lift. like it wasn’t the textbook Steph like break the dude off and get a clean look. Like they were pretty tough shots that he was missing. And so it just, you know, it just was a rough night for Steph and it was a bad it’s a it’s a combination of circumstances. You got a team that’s not playing well it in Golden State at large, right? You’ve got Steph coming back from a break which affects his conditioning. He had an upper respiratory illness which affects his conditioning even more and you’re walking him right back into the damn blender that is the Oklahoma City defense and it just didn’t it just it just wasn’t a good showing for Steph and again like that was really the fundamental driver of the blowout. Shay was consistently breaking down Golden State’s defense and Steph was just not able to break down Oklahoma City’s defense on the other end of the floor. And then things were just exacerbated down the roster by a lack of support from secondary ball handling. Jimmy had a bad night. He was not able to break down Oklahoma City’s defense in any real way outside of a few broken plays where like kind of chaos type of sequences where he’d get and ones or fouls. Jonathan Kaminga scored the ball well, but he also had five turnovers. And you’re starting to see some of that like tunnel vision stuff come back. It a couple possessions in that third quarter run where he just like tried to iso off the top of the key and just put his head down and either turned the ball over. There was one where like Draymond Green had just hit a three in the left corner and he’s been statistically one of Golden State’s best three-point shooters this year. He’s wide open in the right corner and Kaminga doesn’t see Draymond’s man come in a double team and instead of making the easy kick out pass to Draymond, he tries to power into a spin move and then end ends up just smoking a layup at the rim. And so again, like this is the thing with Jonathan Kaminga. like you know played really well to start the season really improving as a read and react player but ultimately he’s got to be able to sustain it especially against higher level competition and this was a big test against Oklahoma City I don’t want to overdo the Kaminga stuff though because again as a team everybody on the Warriors played poorly last night so I don’t think it’s fair to just like go after Kaminga but it was a elite Oklahoma City defense where Kaminga other than you know scoring the basketball a little bit the way that he did kind of struggled against the speed and physicality that they brought to the And then on the other end of the court, Chad Homegrren played damn near a perfect game in support of Shay. He gave a couple of one-on-one buckets to Quinton Post early in the game. Nasty little step through move, a little left shoulder fade away right in the middle of the lane. He burned Quinton Post in spotup situations with threes. He was killing them in the dunker spot off drop offs from Shay’s drives. Shout out to Shay, too. Really quality interior passes when he would get downhill into the lane to Chad. Chad just goes up and dunks everything in that area, which can be a problem. 23 points for Chad on nine for nine shooting, all while being the dominant defensive force that he always is. Showing up high on Steph screens, being active with his hands to make the passes out of there difficult. Cleaning up back cuts. He cleaned up a Steph back cut with a block on the left side of the basket in the first half. Controlling the defensive glass. He had a strong rebounding game. Just Chets’s playing really damn good basketball. He’s slotted very nicely into that second best player on the team role with JDub out and he’s just been kicking ass. There’s no way around it. AJ Mitchell scored more points than any Warrior. Isaiah Joe scored more points than any Warrior. Just it was outclassing literally from the top down in the roster. Isaiah Hartenstein dominated the offensive glass in the third quarter to help blow the game open. Jaylen Williams came in and torched the Warriors with his three-point shooting. They just dominated them. I can’t say enough about the job that Shay’s doing to continue to drive this offense through the injuries. I can’t say enough about how connected they look on defense. I can’t say enough about how physically imposing they look on defense. They’re just off to a great start in their title defense. And watch out because if they beat the Lakers tonight, their next six games are super soft. we’d be looking at an 18-1 Thunder team that is legitimately on pace to make a run at 70 plus wins. Couple of notes for tonight’s Lakers game. We’re going to be covering it on playback. Um, so 6:30 p.m. Pacific time, come hang out with me on playback. We’ll be watching uh Lakers Thunder in detail, kind of breaking the game down as it goes. Couple things I have my eyes on. I really want to see how they guard Luca. Um, I don’t know if Lud Dort’s going to play tonight. He didn’t play last night, so I have a feeling he’s not going to. But if you look at the roster, JDub, Lou Dort, and Alex Caruso are their really their only three options of guys that can guard Luca. And with JDub, and Lou Dort presumably out, you know, I think Kesan Wallace is too small for him. So, it’s going to put a lot of responsibility on Caruso in the main onball matchup with Luca Donuch, which I’m really curious about. I wouldn’t be surprised if they switch with their bigs. So, we’ll get to see a lot of reps of OKC’s bigs guarding Luca. That’s going to be a thing I have my eye on. And then as a Laker fan, I have my eye on Austin Reeves. He’s struggled in the past with some of these really fast, physical teams. Doesn’t get any more fast and physical than this OKC team. Should be a fun game. Again, we’re going to be watching on playback tonight at 6:30. On the Warriors front, really quickly, I’m getting a lot of like sky is falling type of energy from Warriors fan. And I get it. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like it’s a good thing that you got your teeth kicked in by the Thunder. It’s certainly not. They proved that they’re clearly on another level than you right now. And they represent the amount of improvement you need to demonstrate between now and the end of the season, either internally through just internal improvement or through some sort of trade if you want to get to the level to compete with this team. But I also think they’re better than their record looks. Uh, like I think they succumbed a little bit to the intensity of their early season schedule, which I think is especially reflected in their road record and some of the bad losses they’ve had, toasting off that game against Indiana, dropping a game in Milwaukee without Giannis, the back-to-back loss in Portland. Like some of those losses, I think, are reflected from the just difficulty of the early season schedule. Again, you had no business losing that game to Indiana. You’re up 11 in the middle of the fourth quarter. That’s a game you got to close out. And then Steph goes down with an injury and it’s going to be very difficult for this team to win without Steph under any circumstances, especially on the road the way that they were. And so you drop two more games there on the road in Sacramento and Denver that you probably don’t lose both of if Steph plays, right? So like let’s just say that you just don’t blow the Pacers game and Steph doesn’t get six. So you beat Sacramento. Now you’re eight and five. So like I don’t think they’re quite as bad as their record looks. I think they’re going to beat San Antonio tonight. like they are on a backto-back but they barely played last night because they got their teeth kicked in, right? So like Victor Wmanyama had a huge game against Chicago because they allowed him to work in single coverage versus their bigs. But he is still kind of working through the issues with the double teaming and the putting a big bigger athletic forward that gets up underneath him and is super physical. I think Steve Kerr is going to put together an excellent double and swarm game plan tonight. I think Draymond and Jimmy are both going to see some time on Victor Wimyam. I think Kaminga will see some time on Victor Wimbeyama and I think they’re going to get up underneath him and they’re going to pressure him and they’re going to be physical with him and they’re going to double team him. They’re going to force some of San Antonio’s lesser shooters to make shots and I think Golden State’s going to get a bounceback win tonight. We’ll see. San Antonio’s a very good team and they’re at home so it’s certainly not a guarantee, but I still think this Warriors team is good. Like I’m not 100% sure what they are, but I’m 100% sure they’re not bad. Um they’re better than they look. I don’t think they’re a 500 team. They’re going to have something to say at some point here. I think they bounce back tonight in San Antonio.

Jason reacts to the Golden State Warriors looking bad in a blowout loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. He breaks down Steph Curry’s return from illness, Jonathan Kuminga’s up-and-down play, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s great floor game.

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