Creating a Stephen Curry-Ja Morant backcourt poses all sorts of defensive issues. Those problems are exacerbated by the Jimmy Butler injury, as well as the Warriors shipping out two more of their wings to get this deal over the mathematical finish line.<\/p>\n
Golden State shouldn’t care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Losing Butler vaults them to Defcon 1 on the “Western Conference Postseason Irrelevance” scale. If Morant can actualize even 70 percent of the player he’s supposed to be, he helps replace the scoring, playmaking, rim pressure and foul-drawing the Warriors are now forfeiting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nabbing Vince Williams Jr. is a small-time coup. While he stands only 6’4″, he defends with physicality that belies his size. The Grizzlies have not hesitated to roll him out versus wings and forwards like Kawhi Leonard, Paolo Banchero, Trey Murphy III, Kevin Durant, etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Williams’ sub-30-percent clip from deep is lamentable, but he’s knocking down 36.4 percent<\/a> of his spot-up triples. The Warriors needn’t be overly concerned with generating offense when they’ll have both Curry and Morant anyway. Williams’ team-friendly cheapness\u2014he has a $2.5 million club option for next season\u2014and defensive value are more important.<\/p>\n Papering off Butler’s absence on the less-glamorous end still requires another trade. Leaning on Williams, De’Anthony Melton, Gary Payton II and Will Richard as perimeter lifelines leaves the Dubs at a glaring size disadvantage. But this is all true right now. Kuminga isn’t playing, and Moody doesn’t qualify as a larger wing.<\/p>\n Bagging Morant is the bigger deal. Despite having the league’s best offense since before Christmas<\/a>, Golden State’s scoring attack is in shambles<\/a> for the season without Steph on the floor. Morant can help the team tread water during those stretches, much like Butler was doing<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n If Ja rehabs his value in any way, shape or form, the Dubs will be left with quite the trade asset on their hands heading into the offseason or next year. And if he doesn’t, the cost of this gamble is low enough that no material harm to Golden State’s present or future will have been done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Creating a Stephen Curry-Ja Morant backcourt poses all sorts of defensive issues. Those problems are exacerbated by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,479,164,4025,4024,6,255],"class_list":{"0":"post-549830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golden-state-warriors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-golden-state","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-goldenstate","12":"tag-goldenstatewarriors","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-warriors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115930060904956113","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}