The Warriors went to Texas last February without a center. James Wiseman sprained his wrist and Kevon Looney twisted his ankle in the week leading up to the trip. Marquese Chriss was already lost for the season. The front office opted against any emergency plans. So they traveled to Dallas and San Antonio for two games each without a rotation player taller than 6-foot-7.
That’s the true four-game birthplace of their current strategy — more small-ball than ever from the same franchise that won titles shifting Draymond Green to center. But Steve Kerr called the Death Lineup a powerful “counterpunch” in the dynasty days, not a regular-season backbone, as it will be this season.
“We had a really good formula when we were winning championships,” Kerr said. “We didn’t have to play Draymond at the five (much). We had really good centers — guys like Andrew Bogut, David West, JaVale McGee. We could play big for long stretches, which was great for our defense, then hit teams with a small lineup as a counterpunch.”
Green won’t start at center this season, presuming Looney remains healthy. But the Warriors are expected to move out of traditional lineups earlier and more often than ever. It’s why their summer roster reconstruction didn’t prioritize bigs. They don’t plan to deploy them with regularity.
Green will turn 32 this season. His late prime is waning. Common sense might suggest a throttling down of his center usage at this stage of his career. But Kerr is instead cranking it up. He once was hesitant to welcome that wear and tear on Green over the course of an 82-game marathon. He’s now inviting it for probably around 20 minutes a night. Why?
“It feels different. The league feels different to me than five, six years ago,” Kerr said. “There are more and more small lineups out there. Every team has more shooting, so you have to cover more ground, which is something Draymond is really good at. Then when we’re on offense, we want to have more shooting, so putting him at five, having him run pick-and-roll with Steph and shooters around them, that’s tough to guard.”
This is really about three players — Green, Steph Curry and Juan Toscano-Anderson — and it does date back to that Texas trip. Toscano-Anderson, then on a two-way contract, was plugged into the starting lineup, pushing Green down to center. The first night, they erupted for 147 points in a blowout win over the Mavericks. They were a plus-26 in Toscano-Anderson’s 40 minutes.
He perfectly played the role of connector, making the extra pass and timely cut, toggling between guards, wings and bigs as needed defensively, spacing the floor with an occasional 3 and immediately grasping the off-ball screen and slip action, leveraging Steph Curry’s gravity, that would get him wide-open dunks, like the one below, for the rest of the season.
On that Texas trip, Kerr gained belief in the Toscano-Anderson and Green frontcourt combo. He’d use it regularly after Wiseman went down late in the season and the small-ball unit was a catalyst in that league-best 15-5 sprint to the finish line.
“No. 1 ranked defense over those 20 games,” Kerr said. “No. 8 ranked offense. That’s kind of the blueprint to start this year.”
In 524 minutes together, the Toscano-Anderson and Green pairing was a plus-142. Toscano-Anderson was rewarded with a late-season promotion which included a guaranteed contract for the upcoming season. They’d committed to him as a rotation piece, which means they’d prioritized a non-center style.
“It’s more dynamic,” Toscano-Anderson said. “People look at it on paper and say, ‘They are small.’ Yeah, we are smaller than teams with traditional centers, but when you have a guy like Draymond being the anchor for your defense, I don’t really think it matters.”
The Warriors were a bad rebounding team last season, finishing 27th in rebound rate. They’ll be susceptible on the glass again, especially against teams who stay big. But they can leverage their other advantages if they can avoid getting pummeled. Toscano-Anderson is a key to that. In a home win over the Jazz last season, they assigned him Rudy Gobert for a stretch and he muscled Gobert off the glass.
“It’s all about your approach and your effort, your attitude,” Toscano-Anderson said. “You’re not going to get rebounds because you are taller than somebody and 50-50 balls because they land in your hands. You go get them. That’s the mentality we have. I don’t think any of us are too worried about the height differential.”
The Warriors didn’t win the second game on that Texas trip. They lost a slim shootout to the Mavericks. But they’d backed up 147 points with 132 points and Curry detonated for 57 in the second game. Kerr could no longer ignore what a center-less formula and spread floor did for the world’s deadliest shooter.
So that was part of the roster calculation this summer. They added Otto Porter Jr., Andre Iguodala and Nemanja Bjelica to up the shooting and passing IQ, sacrificing size, strength and athleticism in the process. Bjelica can serve as a stretch big specialist next to Green. Iguodala and Porter fit Kerr’s system better than Kelly Oubre Jr. and Kent Bazemore. The rearrangement was done in order to maximize Curry offensively.
“We have a better group for spacing,” Kerr said. “We have more shooting. I thought we came on strong at the end of last year and a lot of that was our spacing and ball movement. I’m hopeful that this year’s team can feel that right away, can understand the need for spacing and swinging the ball side to side and understanding how to play off of Steph, understanding when to screen for him and where he is and Klay, too, when he comes back.
“But this is a group that I think is probably more capable of doing those things than last year’s group, just based on the depth of our shooting and the shooting from the front court. Otto and Nemanja in particular can really stretch the floor as fours. Belli can play five as well. So those are fun combinations to think about.
Looney will still matter. The Warriors had a win in Philadelphia late last season where they couldn’t have survived Joel Embiid without him. Looney and Green tag-teamed him in the post, both picked up five fouls but limited him enough. They’ll have the same formula against Nikola Jokic and even Anthony Davis.
But dominant centers who require Looney’s assistance are not all over the league and his body should be saved for such matchups. Against most opponents, a limited amount of Looney and Green together is increasingly expected.
This is an evolved league. Kerr has said multiple times in recent months that it’s become near impossible to survive offensively with two non-shooters on the floor. Even with an all-time Curry season, the Warriors finished 20th in offensive rating. The target is at least 10 spots higher on that 2021-22 list.
“We’ve got to have better balance to our team,” Kerr said. “The goal going in is to maintain our defensive identity, but hopefully rebuild our offensive identity with better balance and better spacing.”
James Wiseman’s return will, of course, complicate the mix. It’s a bit strange to see a franchise that drafted a center second overall 10 months ago commit to a small-ball heavy approach. But Wiseman’s injury has allowed them to tap the brakes on a rapid developmental plan, which went poorly a season ago, and proceed with more patience.
As his knee crawls back to full health, Wiseman has been working with new assistant coach Dejan Milojević on the more fundamental and technical parts of his game. I’d expect a bunch of early reps in Santa Cruz when his body is ready and then a strategic, simplified NBA role when he’s back in the mix. Unless he plays himself into big minutes this season, the Warriors appear committed to the small-ball identity of this current group and a whole lot of Green at center from start to finish.
Quick note on Green. He has missed the first two practices because of an excused personal absence but is expected to join the Warriors in the coming days.
Kerr: “I’m not concerned at all about Draymond’s absence. We’ve been in contact. He’s been playing in this league a long time. Our main concern is making sure he’s comfortable with the situation he’s dealing with and whenever he gets here, he gets here.”
Along those same small-ball themed lines:
