It’s almost impossible to find relevant early-season story lines concerning the Golden State Warriors.
Unless a star player suffers an injury, or a starter endures an extensive shooting slump, very little that happens in the months leading up to the NBA All-Star break impacts the Warriors’ big-picture perspective.
This is a team that entered the 2017-2018 season as the largest championship favorite in professional American sports history, and a 1-2 start isn’t going to have bettors wishing they laid money down on the Rockets, Celtics or Cavaliers.
That’s why the Warriors’ 1-2 start is hardly a story at all.
Sure, plenty of executives, coaches and players around the league will raise their eyebrows. Many teams wish they had the good fortune of meeting an out-of-shape Warriors’ team in October and not in February or March. But as the NBA learned after the Warriors’ 29-point blowout loss on Opening Night a season ago, what happens to Golden State before the playoffs is largely irrelevant.
So for the most part, it doesn’t really matter if second-year guard Patrick McCaw and veteran free agent acquisition Nick Young don’t seize the opportunities handed to them during the season’s first few weeks. Just like every Golden State player, there’s very little pressure, and more than enough time to figure it out.
Still, there’s a reason why a more competent, more confident McCaw and a more thorough, more complete-looking Young would help the Warriors greatly in the months before the season kicks into high gear.
If either of those two players perform at a high level, it takes the load off of the Warriors’ stars.
Golden State head coach Steve Kerr isn’t going to demand 40-minute nights out of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. Especially not in November and December. Kerr is going to give McCaw and Young plenty of early-season looks, and in their respective minutes, it’s important for the Warriors’ reserve guards to contribute in a more meaningful way.
The Warriors’ regular-season goal is to lock up the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, and to achieve that mission, they’ll need their bench players to win battles with their opponents’ second units. These are battles the Warriors have routinely won, or at least routinely created stalemates with in the past, which has allowed their starters to dominate and rack up wins.
The presences of McCaw and Young are part of the reason Kerr said he believes this year’s Warriors’ team is the deepest he’s had yet. After a 1-2 start in which the Warriors have looked out of shape, the onus now falls on Golden State’s key reserves to back up its head coach’s theory.
McCaw is the Warriors’ 2016 draft choice, a rangy guard with impressive defensive versatility who doesn’t play with a swagger on the offensive end of the floor, but is certainly capable of complimenting a unit led by one of the Warriors’ stars because of his two-way prowess. Young is Golden State’s most high-profile offseason acquisition, a capable shooter who loves having the ball in his hands, but isn’t as intense on the defensive side. Regardless of their deficiencies, though, both players are expected to provide valuable minutes, and right now, both are struggling to do so.
Outside of an aggressive first half offensive display from Young in the Warriors’ season-opener, the pair has yet to take advantage of the opportunity to spell Curry and Thompson. McCaw received a coach’s DNP in Golden State’s win over New Orleans, while Young played just five minutes and failed to score against Memphis in the Warriors’ loss on Saturday.
When the playoffs roll around, it’s much more important that Shaun Livingston and Andre Iguodala are playing at a high level. In the meantime, though, quality minutes out of McCaw and Young allows Kerr to keep Curry and Thompson on the bench for longer stretches, thus helping them preserve their legs for the games that matter most.
On the eve of the regular season, Kerr mentioned that the Warriors have played competitively for 27 of the last 36 months. Golden State has played into the middle of June in each of the last three seasons, and the Warriors are the obvious favorite to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy again this season.
To make good on that goal, they’ll need Curry, Thompson, and the rest of their starting lineup playing at their highest level, and in all likelihood, they won’t need more than a few minutes from McCaw and or Young off the bench. That’s why the more those reserves give Golden State now, the better off the team will be in the long run.
The concept is a relatively simple one, but because of the expectations surrounding the Warriors and the overwhelming belief that their play during the first few months of the season doesn’t mean much, it’s a concept that is easily overlooked.