What’s the cure for being “dead last in transition defense”?

[trade idea + video/interview/transcript]

As someone who loves the game of basketball, I don’t know that I’ve ever disagreed with something Steve Kerr said on the podium, particularly as it pertains to on-court strategy or observations.

I was late to hearing this until yesterday (Sunday), but that one time I disagree happened Saturday as he fielded Warriors’ beatwriters questions after the otherwise innocuous non-gameday, non-practice media availability.

When asked how the film session went with his players that day, Kerr replied:

Transition defense was terrible. Last ten games, we’re dead last in the league in transition. Obviously, those are relatively small sample size, but dead last is never a good thing. But yeah, we had three or four just mind-boggling defensive transition possessions early in the game. They scored 45 out of the gate. We let Duncan Robinson get going because of our miscommunication in transition and then we ended up swimming upstream the rest of the game. So that’s an area where we’ve gotta get better.

When Danny Emerman of the SF Standard followed that up by asking Steve what contributed to the miscommunication, citing the open Robinson threes and perhaps an Isaiah Stewart dunk, Kerr said, “Lack of focus. Lack of urgency.”

Now, anyone who has joined our live chat watch parties knows, I am a detailed note-taker to the point where my audience can hear me click-clacking away as I type them while announcing my unique play-by-play.

They’ve even joked that it’s Warriors ASMR.

But yeah, I sincerely do not recall lack of urgency. I even re-listened to the broadcast as I drove back home, revisualizing all those plays which I rehash anyways, after the buzzer on each livestream.

Sure, the pace was up. A 20-17 Detroit lead soon became 29-22, but Draymond Green hit a clutch three —two total in the first frame, a clear indication he was locked in — and the Warriors were down just 33-31, but then the deficit swelled to 45-37 by the end of it.

Truth be told, the Robinson threes were all the responsibility of one Wardell Stephen Curry. I dissected those mishaps on-air and you can see the early timestamps in the Comments:

But I later attributed those “brain farts” to Curry’s gimpy knee — well, at least two of the three brain farts. Nothing you can really do about those. Increased focus maybe wipes away one of them. That’s the one where, yeah, he didn’t look engaged which, in an Ouroboros sort of way, might have been due to the knee.

Of course, Buddy Hield eventually lost someone baseline for a dunk near the end of the quarter. That gave the Pistons their 44th and 45th points of the quarter, but that was when the team switched to zone.

And Will Richard got beaten by Cade Cunningham twice, one of them on a failed switch with De’Anthony Melton, a beautifully designed inverted elbow screen called by head coach J.B. Bickerstaff.

The other time, Cunningham just used his superior height and athleticism to drop a push shot over Richard in the paint.

Like, are those really IQ mistakes?

So, if we were smarter or more focused, Will would have gotten to Cunningham sooner? Okay, so his body is in position for the baseline cut. 6’2” Richard would have stopped 6’7” Cade… in the post?

Just like when Steph stopped him in the post during that mini-run to make it 29-22, Pistons?

Oh wait, Curry didn’t stop him. Cade made the turn-and-fade banker.

And if 6’4” Buddy had not fallen asleep, he would have strong-armed… 6’8” Ron Holland on that dunk?

I looked back briefly at my notes and the play-by-play on NBA.com and noted only one traditional fast break where Quinten Post looked unathletic on the missed deep hero ball by Steph.

Post couldn’t stop ball (Cade) and then Melton guarded the wrong guy as Isaiah Stewart went down the lane and smashed over nobody.

Actually, what was 6’2”, 200-lb. Melt supposed to do with 6’8”, 250-lb. Stewart barreling down the court, 94 feet, take a charge?

Most of the other Detroit buckets were still 5-on-5, but Cade gets downhill or Duncan flares out past a beastly Jalen Duren screen up top, wham, bam, Pistons score.

It’s a minimally set offense versus a minimally set defense, which is not really a fast break imo, but it happens fast and they are, in my eyes, “set”.

Maybe the NBA defines “transition” as the first nine seconds? Seven? I asked Google AI and it sounded like the stat is subjective. Maybe the GSW analytics personnel influenced Kerr’s observation on film?

That’s just a bigger, faster, stronger team executing 5-on-5 movement on-ball with Cunningham and off-ball, particularly with Robinson, within the first ten seconds of shot clock. Tbh, it is much more watchable than the my-turn-your-turn OKC Thunder. 🤷🏻‍♂️

And I get it, what’s Steve supposed to say? You can’t tell your team there’s no way in hell they were gonna stop a play. Theoretically, even a defender standing no more than 5’6” can get in the right position and take a charge on a bigger player — shout out to the Alpine Striders; they did that to us taller Chinese guys back in tournaments eons ago, although we were nowhere near considered more athletic than them.

And you’ve got to reconvey that gap to the media. You’ve got to make sure your team believes it can do X to have a better shot at winning a game.

All good, Steve.

Incidentally, though, it is harder for smaller players like the Warriors to cover more ground on fast breaks. You know, strides of the legs. Also, Post isn’t the most agile seven-footer around, despite the long legs. You know who is? Jalen Duren; sheesh, what a beast.

Anyways, it’s just physics. I apologize to all. I’m not here to make people feel bad about their team. You’ll see, I will offer and have already offered a solution of hope. 👇

We’ve heard Kerr talk about games devolving into a “track meet” when the Dubs turn the ball over too much. The turnover count wasn’t even that egregious. Golden State “only” committed three in that first period, which is a good number for them, but if a team has bigger, faster, stronger bodies and they can smartly push pace with a tall MVP-caliber point guard, that will also devolve into a track meet.

Looking on the bright side, the Warriors did well to keep themselves in the game, despite the glaring physical disadvantages.

Again, because of the sore knee, I give Steph a pass on that mindless backcourt violation. And even Post for that ridiculous pass at Melt’s feet near the end of the first quarter, which preceded the Holland dunk that gave Detroit an 11-point lead.

QP’s a young guy. Young guys do things that are inconsistent. And Buddy is, well, Buddy. Sometimes he blanks, particularly if you’re having him suddenly protect the backside of the baseline in a zone.

It reminds me of certain times in the men’s league I used to be Commish of, Dream League. Every start of the season, I would worry that teams signed up for the wrong division. Any given team that I hadn’t seen before may not have purposely sandbagged, but it sure looked bad early in the season if a slow, veteran Asian team played against some young new team I had never seen before and had a long athletic kid who could dunk.

And maybe they had a super-quick and buffed point guard who could really push pace and cause havoc. Maybe they also had another quick guy on the wing that smothered all the pass catchers.

I can say this because I’m Asian and, back in the day, my Asian teams and those across the league generally were not that athletic compared to, say, a high school team.

Doesn’t matter how sloppy the long, athletic team was in terms of turnovers or having that “pickup ball” style and not running any pick-and-rolls. Just rebound the ball, outlet, run, apply pressure defense, rinse and repeat.

How smart the slower, methodical Asian team was with passing and cutting didn’t matter. Pace favors athleticism. Track meet, indeed.

Steve, your roster is devoid of length and athleticism. That’s the problem.

That’s why the Dubs are 30th in transition defense in the last ten games.

No amount of IQ, focus, attention to detail, chemistry or urgency is gonna fix that, at least not against good teams. Now, if we are talking about the other team and their lack of IQ, focus, attention to detail, chemistry or urgency, then yeah, that will even things out.

But Detroit is in first place in the East, unlike, say, Charlotte. The Pistons stay away from the brain farts. The Hornets, not so much, as we saw in the Warriors’ win a few weeks ago.

Remember all those Brandon Miller tip dunks and fast break finishes? That athletic advantage was negated by their carelessness or lack of cohesion with the ball in that game.

Granted, when Jimmy Butler was around, he could — by himself — slow pace and frustrate length, size and athleticism so long as he could, especially with trips to the free throw line, be the Robin to Curry’s Batman.

Jimmy also acted as a recess monitor for things like Richard’s reckless gamble on Cunningham’s left-to-right spin move. Did Will think that was somehow inferior than the dominant hand spin? Whoops, let me introduce you to Cade Cunningham!

Jimmy would blow the whistle on Hield just falling asleep weakside, or Post glitching.

Also, “last ten games” means about three or four of those still included the presence of Jimmy. Maybe my theory has some holes.

It’s not really Kerr’s fault, though. I can’t even blame Mike Dunleavy, Jr. The roster as constructed up until when Jimmy got hurt, that actually finally worked. After all that trial and error and adjustments for about half a season, it clicked.

But when you demand such high IQ from complementary players, you are not gonna get length and athleticism as well. Only the elite players possess both paradigms and those guys are hard to get. It’s the yin-yang of basketball, save for the Hall-of-Famers.

Alas, the evolution of the Warriors’ roster is an evergreen discussion for another time.

The real solution is my trade proposal — okay, okay, I know getting Giannis Antetokounmpo is the cure-all. He’s obviously a two-time MVP, so that should come as no surprise that he can lift the Warriors back to contending status.

As discussed on last night’ trade rumor update live chat, we might even net Myles Turner in the process. My trade proposal even had the Bucks plucking Moses Moody, with Taurean Prince as the primary defender replacement, just in case.

Any team with Giannis automatically gets a huge upgrade in the “long and athletic” department.

Especially with Melton eventually in the starting lineup, I could see a path to the Western Conference Finals with Giannis, probably with Turner and Prince among your starting five or main rotation.

But my four-Draft-pick idea to get not only Anthony Davis, but also Max Christie and Naji Marshall, a much stronger, bigger, and slightly taller two-way player than Moody — not to mention Klay Thompson for old times’ sake and to replace Buddy, who would ironically end up on the Pistons in this three-team idea — now that’s a team with some athleticism and length.

There’s also less first-, second-, and third-year mindlessness, as Christie is in his fourth year and Marshall is in his sixth. Apologies to Will, Quinten and, yes, Brandin Podziemski, although Podz wasn’t mercurial in that first quarter in question, so good for him.

So, yeah, if the pursuit of Giannis falls through, just spend the picks on the “Golden State Mavs”. Christie and Marshall are versatile wing assets that essentially hedge against AD’s chronic injuries. I’ll write about this more, soon.

It should be noted, against the vaunted Pistons, we were only two separate Hield open looks from tying the game at 117-117 with six minutes to go, or cutting the deficit to just 124-123 with just 2:20 left.

Either one would have blown the roof off of Chase. This is without cheat-code Curry!

If you look at it that way, Steve’s done a marvelous job with what he’s been given, even if you ignore the “what if” of (not) integrating Jonathan Kuminga.

But what if Moses was Naji on that last jump ball with Cade? Maybe Marshall rips the ball away from Cunningham instead of an ill-fated jump ball?

Imagine Christie (44% 3PP this season) instead of Podz closing games, play-making just like BP can, but more reliably hitting that desperation three with 43 seconds to go, down five. Then all you need is one stop and it’s a one-possession game with the ball.

All without Cheat Code.

In this imaginarium, oddly, Davis actually becomes the icing on the cake to Christie and Marshall (and Klay off the bench), not the other way around. 🤯

Here’s the livestream I did on this trade idea:

Again, I will write about it soon, on here.

Transcript of Saturday’s podium below…

00:00 So you don’t know what —

00:01 STEVE KERR, PRACTICE, 2 DAYS BEFORE PHI-GSW: Did you get the spelling (of patellofemoral syndrome)?

00:02 Yeah, I — yeah. Say that again. How does Tuesday look?

00:07 [Raymond Ridder, joking:] P-A-T-E-L-L-A...

00:08 So that’s a fancy way of saying day-to-day. Yeah. Yeah.

00:13 Alright, so Steph is day-to-day. How is Seth doing? We just got an update on him that he’s progressing with his sciatica.

00:20 Yeah, he’s doing better. Yeah, he’s doing better. That’s all I got for you.

00:26 How did today’s film session go?

00:28 Good. Yeah, transition defense was terrible. Last 10 games, we’re dead last in the league in transition. Obviously, those are relatively small sample size, but dead last is never a good thing. But yeah, we had three or four just mind-boggling defensive transition possessions early in the game. They scored 45 out of the gate. We let Duncan Robinson get going because of our mismatches that are — or miscommunication in transition and then we ended up swimming upstream the rest of the game. So that’s an area where we’ve gotta get better.

01:12 I think there were a couple Duncan Robinson early threes in transition, maybe a Stewart dunk. What was contributing to those in miscommunication?

01:21 Yeah, lack of focus, lack of urgency.

01:26 Gui’s had a good stretch of games here, coming off the bench. I know you, in the past, talked about he’s a good quick short-burst player, kind of player —

01:33 About what? I’m sorry.

01:34 He’s a good quick short-burst — he’s been in short —

01:37 Who is?

01:38 Gui.

01:38 Gui. Yeah, sorry, I didn’t hear the name, yeah. There we go.

01:41 Yeah, there we go. What’s made him so effective in these, in — he’s sort of playing these longer bursts now. What’s made him so effective?

01:49 He has a great feel for the game, good passer. He’s got the soccer background, so he sees the court really well, great cutter, quick decision-maker, so he just, he’s one of those guys. He just connects the game really well and brings great energy every time he’s on the floor.

02:11 Draymond was not very happy with his technical foul yesterday. I was wondering if you had just talked to him about it or planned on bringing it up to the league at all?

02:17 No, I haven’t talked to him about it. I don’t even know what happened and so it’s, yeah, I can’t really comment on him.

02:27 You guys are, since Jimmy, the last six games you guys are 25th in offensive rating. How much of that is just having the, I guess, trying to recover from losing a guy who was so important to what you guys did?

02:41 Well, what is that, five games, I guess, since? Six? Yeah. So yeah, he’s one of the best players in the league and we’ve changed a lot of things upon his arrival. We became very iso oriented in the non-Steph minutes, giving the ball to Jimmy, getting spaced. Everything changes now without Jimmy, so we’re in that transition period where we have to adapt how we’re playing, how we’re attacking, how we’re able to generate an advantage. And that was what today’s offensive work was about.

03:18 And also bottom five in rebounding over six games, too. Is that effort? Is that timing? Is, I mean, what are you seeing there?

03:27 Well, again, any time you’re talking about five or six games, yeah, small sample size but I think there has to be a sense of urgency and I thought we really competed last night, the last three quarters, but the urgency to start the game, the attention to detail was not there, the focus. And without Jimmy, we have to be that much sharper with our execution and our energy and I think those numbers that you’re talking about are all indicators that we have to be on edge and ready to go right, from the jump.

04:06 To follow on, just readjusting offensively and figuring things out with Jimmy, how has that affected Steph’s workload and just kind of the way he’s been defended?

04:14 Well, I don’t think he’s played dramatically more minutes during that stretch, but he has had longer stretches. Last night he played the first 10 minutes, maybe nine and a half, and then he started the second quarter, so he’s playing longer stretches, I would say, some of that by design, some of it just because the subs couldn’t get in for a couple of minutes. So it just, it definitely puts a lot more stress on Steph’s shoulders, not having Jimmy next to him to create shots to take over the offense when needed. So we have to account for that. So we’re trying to do that through our lineup combinations, but we’re also thinking about alternative ways to attack as we go.

05:09 And then to follow on that, I guess just with him dealing with this knee thing in the short term, even if it’s not serious, how do you manage, I guess, just big picture, the urgency to win games and also understanding the importance of his health down the stretch over these last 30 games?

05:22 I mean, you have to do both. I mean, that’s the job, right? That’s our job as a staff, as a team, mix and match the lineups and you have to include the performance staff in all these conversations. Rick (Celebrini) and I had this exact conversation today, so everything changes daily. We’re constantly talking with Steph, checking in with him, see how he’s feeling. The knee last night was the same thing that kept him out of the Minnesota game last week and I would imagine it’s something that we have to really monitor here, especially before the All-Star break, where we’ve gotta see if he can take on his usual workload or does he need to miss a game here or there? That’s something we all have to figure out.

06:15 Steve, did the defense, the way I saw Thompson defended Steph last night, did it feel even more physical or grabbing and holding than maybe even (inaudible)?

06:25 Well, Detroit’s a great defensive team. They’re one of the most athletic teams in the league. That’s what they do. That’s their style. And Thompson and his brother both are just athletically as big and quick as any defender’s Steph is gonna see all year long, so a lot of teams try to guard Steph like that. Not all of them have the personnel to do so. Detroit definitely did.

06:52 With that, though, I mean, I know Steph doesn’t like talk about it because he doesn’t want to come up across as a complainer. It just feels like sometimes with the fouling, with officiating (inaudible) the NFL, like, what is a catch? What is a foul? Does that get a little confusing or convoluted, how you ref or officiate Steph compared to other players, almost?

07:11 Yeah, I mean, I think Steph is unique because of his off-ball game. I think our officials are most used to guarding pick-and-roll, certain actions, and so yeah, the off-ball stuff, freedom of movement, it’s a little trickier. So we try to point it out very politely.

07:35 How’s (inaudible) Kuminga doing?

07:38 He’s doing better. I asked him last night after the game. He said he was feeling better. He got a workout in today before our practice, so he’s getting — he’s improving. He’s getting closer to being able to play. I don’t know what his status will be for Tuesday.

—

07:55 How was the film session today?

07:57 QUINTEN POST: I thought it was a good film session. I think the biggest emphasis was transition defense. Didn’t do a good job yesterday of keeping them out of transition. Too many turnovers and then, yeah, just we gotta do a better job of talking on defense, loading up early, keeping the easy baskets out of the game. That was the biggest emphasis.

08:26 It seemed like when Steve was talking about transition defense, he mentioned lack of attention to detail, focus, all miscommunication. Those are kind of under one umbrella. Where do you see those concepts coming into the game, just attention span, focus?

08:43 I mean, obviously we’re in the middle of a, I think they call it the dog days, right, where All-Star Break is closing out the trade deadline? All of those things are definitely in play and the NBA, it’s a league of small margins, right? And you — and in the film session you can see it because there’s three guys that the — it’s not like an intent thing. It’s not like people — it’s not that people aren’t giving a hundred percent, but it’s just, this guy’s focused on doing this job and the other guy’s focused on doing this job, but we’re not on a string. And we’ve played some good basketball over the last couple weeks, I think, even with Jimmy being out, which has been tough, but yesterday we weren’t on a string. We weren’t fully focused, but yeah, we will be better.

09:37 Is there a way to train focus?

09:42 Most of these guys have been doing this for a super long time, so I think all of them, all of us, we know what it takes, so it’s just a matter of getting back to that.

09:53 Where do you feel like your game is at right now?

09:56 I feel like for me, the biggest thing is consistency with new — there’s kind of a new rotation. I kind of know where my minutes are. My biggest thing is being a plus on defense and then, obviously, I wanna knock down shots at a high clip. Yesterday, I didn’t make any and that’s part of the game, but I’m working every day. I’m making sure that I’m on top of my things and, overall, I feel like I’m in a good spot.

10:31 When your outside shot isn’t falling, how do you, like, how do you wanna impact the game otherwise?

10:37 On the defensive end, mostly. On offense, being a ball mover, swinging the ball, making life easy for other guys. And then defensively, boxing out my guy, making sure we get rebounds, being the loudest guy on the floor, making sure we handle the pick-and-roll well. Those are some of the things that, yeah, I want to impact the game on.

11:03 And you mentioned the deadline earlier. How are you reconciling everything going on? There’s a lot of buzz. There’s a lot of smoke going on. How are you approaching things?

11:14 I mean, I’m not focused on it, to be honest. For me, we’re just — we’re still playing ball and whatever happens, happens and still my second year in the league, so last year was crazy, for sure. And yeah, we’ll just have to see what happens this year.

🫶💙💛