The Golden State Warriors Look to Make History

The Golden State Warriors Look to Make History

What did he do? I want to know what the heck happened. Was this the players? Is this the coach? Is this the organization? What happened? I need to see a little different game plan. I need to see a game plan that features obviously Jimmy Butler and and Jonathan Kaminga. The Golden State Warriors have the opportunity to cause the biggest upset since the Denver Nuggets in 2020 to come back from a 3-1 deficit and win the sevename series against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Hey, what’s happening everyone? This is Swiss Culture. After taking a one- nothing lead in the series against Minnesota, the Warriors find themselves on the wrong side of a 3-1 deficit. The Timberwolves rattled off three straight wins against Golden State and seemed poised to take the series in five games. Anthony Edwards alongside a hot shooting Julius Randall once again proved insurmountable with the minuscule, if any, adjustments that were made by the Warriors as the teams battled it out in game four. Shockingly, Jimmy Butler only managed to put up 14 points on a low balling nine shot attempts. Jonathan Kaminga seemed ready to play, but for some reason still didn’t get into the starting lineup and played even less minutes than last game. Contrary to the last postgame press conference, Steve Kurt doesn’t seem to be as confident going into game five. Ideally, we we we could put more shooting around him to open up the floor a little bit. Uh but uh you know with with Steph out um Steph’s the guy who breaks the defense down uh for us and and creates that offensive flow and I think the end result is that um shots are more difficult for every every single guy. Everybody’s shots are going to be more difficult. We’ll look at the tape and see where we can find some openings for him and I know he’ll be aggressive for game five. Are the Timberwolves that much better than this Warriors team without Steph Curry or is there something else going on? Could the Warriors fasttrack Steph Curry to play in game five? And if not, will he even be ready for a potential game six? I’ve covered games 1 through three. So, if you’ve been watching, this will follow up on some of the earlier key issues that were discussed. So, let’s get into game four and what we can expect for game five in Target Center. Before that, however, be sure to like the video and subscribe to Swiss Culture for the most analytical and entertaining NBA content on the planet. Now, get ready. you’re about to [Applause] get. The Warriors went into game four with a slew of data and on the backs of impressive performances from both Jonathan Kaminga and Jimmy Butler in hopes of tying the series 2 to2. After all, the Timberwolves shook off some rust and rallied to win two straight after losing game one. What’s stopping the Warriors from getting their second win if they build on the good things that happened in game three? I mean, they did manage to close out with Steph only having played 13 minutes in their only win of the series. Unfortunately for the Warriors, a lot changed. What allowed them to win game one no longer applied. After their first win, the Timberwolves adjusted to the situation on the floor and did so much better than the Warriors did and continue to do. In order to diagnose what the problem is that the Warriors have been having, we have to start with game one and determine what’s changed on both teams or didn’t and what they need to do in order to have their best chance of taking game five. A few things stood out in game one that the Warriors have yet to replicate in any of the succeeding games. The first and most obvious is outside shooting. This has been primarily due to the injury and absence of Steph Curry. Even though Steph Curry only played the first 13 minutes, he set the tone for the game and created a rhythm for the rest of the players. The gravity and spacing tends to open up on the floor and would often leave his teammates to take practice shots in game. The effect of his presence on the court snowballs in that each player for the Warriors is put on a ranking scale for shooting, which essentially determines how much defensive attention they will give to players not named Steph on the perimeter. This ranking scale can be looked at in terms of how much space each player has to take their shot on average. Steph would get the least amount of space with up to two defenders before Draymond with the most amount of space having to even face a single defender. Everyone else sort of falls in between with heel in second and so forth. Enough space was created for players like Jimmy and JK to utilize the space in the paint and blow teams defenses apart inside out. only that didn’t happen because instead of JK, the Warriors employed Draymond’s skill set, which is finding Curry to complement the offense and get Steph better passes and more open looks, mostly because of team chemistry. At the other end of the floor, Draymond’s decision-making and ability to read offenses made him the perfect compliment to Steph’s game. Between two players, they provided arguably the league’s most devastating twoman tandem on offense and defense. This was the Warriors basic formula. Make no mistake, there was never an issue with fitting JK and Jimmy. The issue was how to find enough spacing on the floor for Draymond if they use Jonathan. With Steph Curry out of the equation, we see a true collapsing defense. The defensive intensity now switches to heal on top of the perimeter podium with Pods, Moody, and even Quinton Post struggling to have an impact. The closeouts are more aggressive, and even without the closeouts, guys are now more wary of being closed out because they know Steph Curry isn’t there to take the attention off of them. This aspect of the game is often overlooked when we talk about Steph Curry’s gravity because he elevates these guys when he’s off the floor. These players actually play worse than they would if they hadn’t been playing with Steph in the first place. The Timberwolves, however, already had their strategy laid out with Steph Curry on the floor and weren’t able to adjust to a Warriors team without him in game one. Once they adjusted, a simplified strategy of shutting off heielded with Jayen McDaniels and directing their attention to the secondary shooters sought to expose these players dependency on Steph Curry. Head coach Steve Kerr opted to play Jonathan Kaminga in order to spur the Warriors offense, but this didn’t resolve the dependency issue of the secondary shooters. With JK becoming a part of the Warriors offensive plans, the Timberwolves decided to somewhat simplify the defense. Their game plan adjusted to packing the paint on drives and closing out on shooters. They were also very disciplined defensively, not taking the bait on Jimmy’s drives. After chasing guys off the three-point line, they still made them take contested twos. With Minnesota’s size advantage, this was a rather easy task. The Warriors small ball without shooting has met its match. So, what results have we gotten thus far? The Warriors have yet to break 100 points outside of a garbage time score runup in game four. Outside of game one, the Warriors have not made more than 10 threes in a game. Also, in game four, Jimmy only played 34 minutes, matching what he played in the Warriors blowout loss in game two. This leads to the next big issue for the Warriors. Jimmy Butler is playing through his pelvic contusion injury. I mentioned this in the prior video. However, you could see it clearly pronounced in game four, much more so than even in game three. Plus, he was suffering from an illness to top it all off. Not only was he avoiding contact, he wasn’t even attempting to shoot, sometimes even without a glance at the basket. This is an issue compounded by the lack of outside shooting. Without the three ball, the Warriors have to lean heavily on penetration in the paint from JK and Jimmy. But with Jimmy unable to take the contact and Jonathan Kaminga not playing nearly enough minutes as a focal point of the offense. This handicapped the team from realizing their full potential. No one has shown the ability to put the ball in the hoop without Curry on the floor outside of Jimmy and JK. Yet with Jimmy injured, JK wasn’t given a significant enough role to try to get the job done. It isn’t a question of whether or not Jonathan can contribute at this point. And this has brought up quite a number of questions. The Timberwolves have clearly planned for Jonathan Kaminga, but this still hasn’t stopped him from producing. Their head coach, Chris Finch, had this to say about JK. Hey, um and and and with the Warriors, Chris, props to Jonathan Kaminga. Seriously, I mean, he attacked and got some makesover Rudy. Kuminga’s gifted, isn’t he? He is. He’s a He is a very gifted scorer. Um you know, he’s got uh definitely has got that He reminds me a little bit of Ant. He’s got that scorers mentality that he’s going to be able to get to his spots. He’s going to come downhill on you. Uh he’s going to put his shoulder on you and hit you before he finishes. I I give him great props, too, because he’s been out of the rotation um for quite a while. And for him to be able to come into the to this series and uh be able to contribute like that, you know, it’s a credit to him and his professionalism staying ready and of course his talent and skill. Finch just compared Jonathan Kaminga to Anthony Edwards. Now, back in December, I made the same exact comparison on X that had the entirety of NBA Twitter crucifying that particular take. But obviously, Swiss don’t miss. In addition to praises outside the organization from Finch, there were a number of sports media personnel echoing the same sentiment. Kendrick Perkins tweeted, “I hope to get the hell away from Steve Kerr. He’s not the coach for this young, talented, and athletic young star. He really need an opportunity to spread his wings. Put some lemon paper on it, some buffalo, maybe some barbecue sauce. Yeah. Anyway, K really had this man out of the rotation. NBA legend Dwayne Wade on his timeout podcast had this to say about the Warriors and Jonathan Kaminga. Come on now. I need to see Jonathan Kaminga get featured because he’s one guy on that on that side he cannot guard. If I’m and I’m not a coach, but I need that young man. Stop. Stop. Stop. What do you mean by that? I need to I got to free him. We need to let him be him and we going to work around his mistakes, but young man, you can go on the score 30 and 40. We need that. I need to see, as you said, I need to see from that coaching staff over there, how y’all going to put a game plan together to highlight Jimmy Butler’s strengths, not saying Jimmy got to go get 40. Jimmy ain’t coming down shooting 10 shots in a row. That’s not who he is. He gonna pass the ball and he’s gonna look a little passive at time because he tries to play the game the right way. So you need somebody else that does not have that same mentality. And there’s only one dude over there. Let the young fell rock. And hopefully Steph get back and y’all can hold it off. But y’all have to come up with something. Give Minnesota something that they have not seen. Running the same offense that you will run. When Steph is in the game, ain’t going to work. It ain’t it ain’t going to work. It ain’t going to work to win the series. Still, Steve Curry refuses to put any sort of significant focus on Jonathan Kaminga running the offense with Steph Curry injured. Despite the handcuffs, Jonathan was the Warriors best performing player with 23 points while shooting 11 of 12 from the free throw line. I did take note of the fact that he did not pull down a single rebound. While I would usually fault a player for such a stat in 30 minutes of playing time, JK wasn’t put in a position to positively impact the game off the bench, as you’d expect for how well he performed in game three. My take is that he’s trying to avoid getting injured for the offseason and doesn’t believe the team is putting out their best effort and maybe not even capable of winning. Kerr either doesn’t believe in Kaminga or the front office is trying to ensure he doesn’t get any offer worth leaving the team for in free agency. There is simply no other reason to limit his time on the floor. Could this have been what prevented them from featuring him in the Rocket series? If so, that could have been a grave miscalculation which ended up costing the Warriors in the end. At this point, there are only two ways that I can come up with for the Warriors to get a win in game five. The first would be a fast-tracked return of Steph Curry. But is this even possible? Steph was only diagnosed with a grade one strain, the lowest grade possible, and those can heal in as quickly as a few days. Steph is scheduled for an evaluation on the same day as game five, so maybe it’s possible he returns, right? Unfortunately, Tim K had stopped by the guy’s shootaround and according to his report, Steph was giving golf tips to assistant coach Bruce Fraser and wasn’t moving great as he walked away. This was reported on May 12th in the afternoon. In addition to that, Draymond was asked about the possibility of Steph Curry returning. It’s later stage of of yours and Steph’s career. Do you expect him to almost try to push himself back considering the circumstance and and do you have to be part of a conversation of like, you know, him maybe having to protect himself from from rushing back? No, we not going to Superman this thing. If if if he’s in a place where he can play, I’m sure he will. And him and Rick and everybody will figure that out. But we don’t need Superman. I played the long game. Steph was then asked about Draymond’s comments and his response went as followed. Even if I wanted to be Superman, I couldn’t. Needless to say, the chances of Steph getting the okay to play in game five is a resounding no. The only other way that the Warriors could possibly win is if Steve Carr puts his full support behind Jonathan Kaminga. He has to start play most of if not the entire game and the rest of the team would also have to step up with the same amount of confidence and intensity they had with Steph Curry on the floor. The problem with this, however, is twofold. First, it takes away Steve Curry’s credibility as a head coach. While it wouldn’t be surprising to many who have seen him stumble into great lineups due to injuries or absences because of the DNPs, relying on Kaminga and then winning would make this the most blatant and egregious act that Steve Kerr could have committed as a head coach. Secondly, if it is in fact due to the front office’s actions and not Steve’s own doing, that’s an entirely different scandal. That being said, I don’t see this happening. This is the Warriors game seven and Steve is either going to win his way or no way. While the Warriors have come back from a 3-1 deficit, and many teams have done the same, a tiny 4% of the total number of teams in that position, the Warriors are currently in the same position they had the Rockets in in the first round, and that series went to seven games. Do the Warriors have what it takes to create the subset? Let me know what you think by posting your thoughts in the comments below. Before that, however, be sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and turn on all your notifications so you don’t miss any of my latest uploads. Thanks for watching. Till next time. [Music] At halftime. Don’t throw it at me. They were out rebounding by 10. They had more second chance points 10 to two. They had more paint points, more bench points. Why is that, Kaminga? And and and you’re not going to start him. What did he do? What what did he do? I want to know what the heck happened. Was this the players? Is this the coach? Is this the organization? What happened?

An opportunity

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