Thought it was interesting how Kerr adapted to throwing a lots of blitz/traps/soft traps/hedges at Ant in the PnR, really seemed to mess up Minny’s timing which led to a lot of TO’s and wasted possessions, Minny didn’t seem to have much of a counter punch other than KAT/Ant Iso

What a mess of a game. 2 minutes in and we get 3 ejections and one likely suspension issued post-game. Fun game though.

Podziemski looked fearless and delivered on his best chance at securing rotational minutes for quite some time. Having a second ball handler, turns out, is actually a good thing. I was surprised at the Wolves not sending him to the right at every possible opportunity, Podz has a quick first step and he strolled to the basket quite often because of that. He hit some 3s even, though that’s something that definitely desires improvement especially considering his size.

The CP3/Saric 2-man game is the best thing that was added over the offseason. People underestimate having a big that can dribble, especially because most shot creators are guards and forwards nowadays. If you get an opposing big out of position defensively and you have a big that can take advantage, you can score and that’s what Saric did.

This Warriors team is also a bloody good rebounding team offensively. I have mixed feelings though cuz on one hand that’s largely because of the awful shooting splits displayed at home, on the other hand it’s leading to a much better team-wide defense and that’s a good thing. What’s clear is that a lack of trying isn’t why the Warriors are 6-6, an average night offensively would do wonders, no joke.

Overall there wasn’t much the Warriors could do after being so undermanned and in the end KAT bailed the Wolves out with some huge 3s despite a very strong defensive performance. Honestly felt like Edwards despite a decent performance took the bait too much in terms of passing into traffic, in fact that was the clear gameplan and the Warriors forced a lot of turnovers as a result.

CP3 despite the low assists facilitated the game well. Felt like Kuminga was a little bit too unaggressive but tbh seeing his history of struggling against teams with elite rim protection I don’t mind it too much. Cory Joseph though, he doesn’t look good and that could play in as a factor in future load management games (if there are such games). Also, Warriors switched against KAT and Gobert a lot inside the arc and it actually worked out very well. (Also, Alexander-Walker was kinda terrible.)

I said it after the last game and I’ll say it again; this team makes way too much sense to put out lineups that make little sense. The amount of times where the Warriors could switch the screen and still have a very good at worst perimeter defender like Kuminga or Podz was something we barely saw in the first 11 games, but it was a formidable advantage. I was watching the game and 80% of the time I was thinking, man, I should see this happen more often.

And we gotta talk about how Draymond’s emotions are becoming a bigger liability. Yes, it always was a factor but it’s 3 games in a row now and let’s be honest, the fact that whether he wants to play games without Steph is questionable is kind of appalling cuz it felt like he was quieting down that narrative the last 2 seasons. Like, do your talk on the floor, nobody was questioning whether Dray was phoning it in with Steph out last season.

It was a “good” loss, idk how far moral victories will be able to keep my morale high but to say the least, there were encouraging signs. Offense at home has been absolutely terrible but hey, at least on paper OKC should be a much more favorable matchup offensively. Gotta worry about SGA though but thank goodness Steph’s injury is just day-to-day.

All I can say is, this is a deep team with lacking top-end scoring bar Steph. In short, there’s a lot to figure out. But let’s see what they can do, Thursday should be another good one.