The meta of KYP (Know Your Personnel)

[GSW-DEN videos/interviews/transcripts]

Jimmy Butler postgame Denver on the defensive breakdowns, from the locker room and thanks to Joseph Dycus of Bay Area News Group:

Some more effort, you know what I’m saying? Maybe a little bit more KYP at the same time, but defense is all, if you want to do it, whether you’re on the ball, whether you’re in the gap, whether you’re the low man, if you want to do it, you’ll do it.

KYP = Know Your Personnel. Here’s Mark Cuban explaining it, eons ago — you only need to watch the first 46 seconds:

Coincidentally, I noticed a KYP moment during the loss to Indiana. I’m not picking on Jonathan Kuminga here, I’m just pointing out a real example of the KYP woes the Warriors have been having. Here, JK gets caught in “no man’s land” (i.e., he’s not guarding anybody). What he should be recognizing is that Draymond Green — perhaps greatest defender of all-time — doesn’t need any help in the switching defense and, because JK just doubled someone alongside one Wardell Stephen Curry, mathematically that means somebody on the Pacers is open. That somebody in this case is Pascal Siakam, who drills an open three — also, somehow I forgot to timestamp the real-time discussion in the livestream for GSW-IND:

In an ideal situation, such as the overtime home win versus the Nuggets, the personnel is experienced enough that any mistakes by a young player on defense can probably be swept under the rug, more often than not. So I wouldn’t worry about the above example being an epidemic on the Dubs — again, it is just a quick example to illustrate what KYP is on a basketball court.

Which gets us back to the “doom and gloom” aspect of fandom.

The Warriors are not healthy. Steph is missing games, Al Horford is missing games. That is the current issue.

The losses can be attributed as follows…

• Portland: vets and coaching staff too ambitious on a back-to-back after the overtime win, as Kerr said on the podium back home at practice after Indiana, but they probably lose this game regardless of any strategies employed to curb age, as the Trail Blazers are a solid regular season squad — we saw in the Sacramento game that the youngsters can be good, but for a full 48 minutes, probably not.

• Milwaukee: basketball impotence (see embedded article below), which is tied to age. 🤷🏻‍♂️

• Indiana: basketball impotence, again.

• Sacramento: no main guys other than Horford, which is again tied to age and health — then again if Horford and Quinten Post don’t combine for 0-for-10 on threes, who knows? It was only a five-point loss with 20 turnovers committed.

• Denver: no Steph, but I ask the thumb-typing addicts this…

…can it sometimes just be that the other team is better than you? Here we go with the psychology of the fanatic again. Yes, we just beat the same team that killed us. Yes, that felt good. Everyone in blue and gold is still wearing blue and gold, so technically, yes, it’s the same franchise.

But, KYP, man!!

That was a completely different identity playing against a championship-ring-wearing team led by Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and, now, a perennial All-Star-caliber guy (who won’t actually make it to any All-Star Games, unfortunately) in San Jose’s own Aaron Gordon — this is a well-oiled machine let alone the revenge factor from a couple weeks ago. If anyone can make you look bad, it’s the Murray-Jokic-Gordon humming on all cylinders.

Remember, in that overtime win, Denver was actually in control in the 4th and then Curry went Chef Mode.

We are just not winning many games without the gravity of Steph. KYP!!

I know Steve Kerr just said on the podium that last year Golden State was 7-5 without Curry. But I saw on the bkref.com game log that three of the early wins during that 12-3 start, when he had a sprained ankle, included two straight at home in a back-to-back against the depleted Pelicans — no Trey Murphy at all and Herb Jones only played the first game and you know how the Dubs have trouble against long defenders — and then an overtime win at Houston where Buddy Hield hit six threes and Fred Van Vleet was 1-for-8 from beyond the arc.

So I’ve got an asterisk on those three wins, which then brings us down to a record last year of 4-5 without Steph. Actually, it’s 4-9 without Steph, if you count the Western Conference Semifinals.

In the regular season, this team is going to hover around .500, at best, without him.

Now, the other thing that’s happening is that Kuminga is facing double-teams in Curry’s absence and the ecosystem that revolves around Steph continues to revolve around him, except that he’s not here.

Even Jimmy’s right-hand man, Ernie Plascencia, tweeted as much, when asked postgame Denver about why Butler didn’t take over, a la Miami Heat playoffs Jimmy:

…maybe about 90% of the time he’s schemed out or they have loaded the whole defense to him. It’s not hard to guard the team when you just need to load up on one guy and live with the results. Very simple basketball actually

It’s gotta be difficult, if not damn near impossible, for a coaching staff to completely ditch the usual identity and only go with Jimmy (or Jonathan) as the fulcrum.

This was sort of tried during the Western Conference Finals, but Minnesota was too athletic and talented. I don’t think there’s a single Warriors fan out there that thinks this version of the Denver Nuggets, i.e., the one that just blew out our Warriors, wouldn’t at least take those WCS Timberwolves seven games.

I’m not worried about the blowout to the Nuggets the other night, but yeah it sucks to be 5-5.

And so, one matchup in Denver, tenth game of the season, nearly your entire roster is built to play around Steph, without Steph, it’s gonna look bad unless a new identity is established out of the blue. It’s hard enough to establish the identity early on season when Curry is playing.

For the sake of argument, let’s say Steph was out for the season with this illness, which is what a lot of thumb-typists seemed to be alluding to after the game by their “doom and gloom” mantras. How long would it take to re-establish the GSW identity to revolve around, say, Jimmy and JK?

I think it would take a month. Like, twelve games of reps.

Present situation with the long roadie after this “get back game” is gonna be hard, DubNation. Steph has to be healthy. He can even win us 50% or more of the games when things don’t always go right, when we’re putting lipstick on a pig — the pig being how ugly the identity can get (read: defensive stops first, then let controlled chaos happen), as described by Draymond.

A lot of it will be the schedule. I mean, college coaches pad the start of their seasons with easy ones on purpose, right? It’s all about needing to stumble and fall many times whilst establishing your identity.

But unfortunately the NBA schedule is the NBA schedule.

Just hunker down and root for your team. It’s really just all on the vets and their health.

Next benchmark: Christmas. Last season, the Warriors lost to the Lakers and dropped to 15-15. LA at the time became 17-13 after that win and then, 52 games later, ended up tied at 50-32 in the West, earning them the 3rd seed after they completely changed their identity at the trade deadline acquiring Luka Doncic.

Mike Dunleavy, Jr. actually traded for Dennis Schroder relatively shortly after Melton went down and the Warriors were 14-11 at the time, so that happened a few games before that Xmas matchup, having gone 2-9 since that 12-3 start, obviously.

By the way, Kuminga can’t be traded until January 15th. Definitely no need to talk mock trades until then, as I don’t think Moses Moody’s contract, the next biggest one, at $11.6 million can get any return from the market that moves the needle. But, Google “bkref.com salaries” and scroll down to Kuminga and look at the names up and down from him.

It’s going to be an interesting long road trip coming up. Let’s hope Steph gets back and the ecosystem starts to thrive again, so we don’t have to wander too far into the dark path — that will seem even darker if you read too many tweets.

Don’t fall for none of that fear and despair on those thumb-typing apps. There’s a lot of basketball to be played until January 15th and those who bleed blue and gold might even thank JK and Mike for the stalemate because we really have no choice until then but to, as Steph always says, enjoy the process.

Speaking of process, I should also mention this: Curry’s defense this season is worthy of at least Third Team All-Defense so far, if they had such a thing (they only have two teams voted on). His dedication on that side of the ball has been impressive — there’s a better chance of it rubbing off on everyone else than there isn’t.

Enjoy the process. But also, Know Your Personnel: certain guys have to stay healthy or stay virus-free or this could look like wheels are starting to fall off — plenty of opportunity between now and Jan. 15th to get the wheels back on, though, should that happen.

We’ll see how the coaching staff re-integrates Melton, as well as Seth Curry. Luckily, Melton’s greatest asset is his on-ball defense, so he kind of just merely needs to get in game shape once the knee is deemed 100% functional. Like, who cares if his shooting stroke is on point or not? Just get him in there to defend.

Can Seth play third-string point guard? That would be my question.

Pat Spencer has flashes, but let me put it this way: he should spend all his time practicing hitting the 15-footer. That’s the opposite of what trainers teach these days. If he hits those like layups, then he’s a rotational NBA player. If not, he’s just there as a stop-gap third-stringer when one of your point guards is out.

Unfortunately, the Curry ecosystem doesn’t presently allow Draymond to slide over to the traditional 1. It still requires him at the 4 with occasional ball-handling duties. It would be nice, though, if in the future he and Will Richard can develop some pick-and-roll chemistry some time before Green hangs them up.

I’ve already said what a boon Richard will be once he improves the ball-handling, maybe next year:

CJ McCollum-like, perhaps, plus the innate defensive acumen? That’s a modest enough offensive comp for scoring with ball-handling, I hope.

I wonder if there’s a way to evolve the Curry ecosystem into something with a little more oomph? Like I said, a one-two punch of Steph-then-JK, more pronounced, might be helpful for the process. We’re already seeing Curry set some super-effective picks, like in that Clippers game up close and courtside (10:00 mark):

Or this Curry-Kuminga inverted screen at 14:05:

Probably wishful thinking to want a one-two punch identity to click before January, and perhaps impossible to actually implement IRL, especially given the modern day lack of practice time. It’s probably amazing we got the ecosystem to this point, all things considered.

Let’s remember to be grateful for that.

Transcripts and videos with captions of Draymond’s “I’ve failed” quote, Jimmy, Steve, and Post and Trayce Jackson-Davis saying the youngsters need to bring more energy (it wouldn’t have mattered against the Nuggets, KYP) all below…

00:00 Draymond, what did you think the biggest problem was tonight?

00:11 DRAYMOND GREEN, POSTGAME GSW-DEN: Amongst many things, we didn’t defend. It’s been a thing. We didn’t play with high energy, which has off and on, been a thing. And when you don’t do those two, you’re playing against a set defense every play and it’s hard to execute, so I think there were multitude of things.

00:42 Why do you think the lack of energy has been a thing, off and on?

00:46 I don’t know. I think our defense hasn’t been great. And when you have as many letdowns, body language drops, effort drops. So I think two are connected in some ways, shape or form.

01:07 I guess with regards to the defense and the issues you’re having, what are you seeing with regards to the breakdowns?

01:12 We’re not taking one-on-one matchups personal. We have not been a great help side team. We’re not on a string. Defense must move on a string. We’re not doing none of that.

01:32 So what’s the first step to doing that?

01:35 Number one is taking the challenge, personal challenge. Gotta take the personal challenge to guard your man. Then if you get beat, there’s help, but I think right now we’re just relying on the help to be there. But when you just, when you don’t give effort, then help can’t get there. Starts individually. Everybody must take the challenge individually of guarding their man and then you build out from there.

02:05 Draymond, as the leader of the defense, have you sent that message to the rest of the team?

02:09 I’ve failed, if our defense look as shitty as it does. I’ve failed. So you can send as many message as you want. Until we do it, I’m failing at it.

02:26 I know there’s been a conscious effort to limit your minutes at center so far this year. Just how do you feel that’s been going up to this point?

02:32 I don’t give a shit. I play what position I’m, I’m at and it is what it is. But I, defense sucks. And we’re 5-5. They go hand in hand.

02:51 Draymond, obviously lots of guys had an off night tonight, but specific to Moses and BP and JK, they were really struggling shooting from the floor and they had their issues, obviously, defensively. When you have young guys that go through a bad game or a string of bad games, what do you think the key is to get them out of a little small funk?

03:15 You just have to play harder. The only way out of a funk is to play with more aggression, play with more effort, give more effort. You just gotta play harder and it, the only way to work your way through that and outta that is to give more effort and they have to do that. This is the first time JK has played this amount of minutes. Our schedule hasn’t been, it’s been complete shit. And so you’re, you’re playing the amount of minutes you’re playing, you’re being relied on night in and night out, and yet you’ve played more games in the amount of days that you’ve ever played, so it’s a whirlwind. I’m sure his head’s spinning, but, he, a) this is what he wanted, and b) he’s cut out for it and we know he’s cut out for it. He’ll be better. Moses has been good. He had a rough night tonight. And BP will be better, but it’s going to require them to play with more energy and effort. When you’re a young guy, you have a responsibility to bring energy. And when, if they do that, everything else will fall into place and we know that, we know they’re more than capable of doing it. Just gotta fight through it. And they will.

04:44 Given where you’re at, 5-5 and the upcoming road trip, too, the schedule doesn’t get easier, Steve singled out Sunday against Indiana as, like, a must win game. Do you view it that way too?

04:57 I don’t view a Game 11 as a must win, but, I get what he’s, I understand what he’s getting at. At some point, we have to start building an identity. You always must protect home court, so there’s that. And you’re going out on the road for 10 days. We always talk about the getaway game. This is it. It’s a team that just beat us, that kind of took a game that we should have won, so I understand what he’s getting at for sure. And I’ll approach it that way, and I’ll make sure we approach it that way, but we just gotta be better.

05:43 What kind of identity does this team need to build?

05:46 I think we need to be a hard playing team. We need to be great on the defensive end and we need to be hard playing. If those two things happen, everything else fall into place, but we must be a high effort, high energy team and we must be a great defensive team. If we can’t reach those milestones, we don’t stand a chance.

—

06:13 Trayce, the most common theme that we’ve gathered so far is that you guys did not come out with the required energy, competitive fire. What did you see in that respect tonight?

06:26 TRAYCE JACKSON-DAVIS: This is a great team and I think we were a little lackadaisical coming out, at the end of the day. We fought. I think we got it down to one, so we were there, but we gotta continue to execute. Defensively, I thought we just had lapses. A lot of lapses and so we gotta look at the film and clean those things up.

06:48 What’s the first step to fixing those lapses?

06:50 I would say our help side pulled in. And, yeah, I’d say that’s the biggest thing. When guys are rolling, you can’t give him free baskets to the rim, especially one of the best players on the planet. You just can’t. And when he gets those easy looks, he starts to feel good and then he starts picking us apart.

07:08 You did have that 10-0 burst. You were out there with QP at the same time. What was it like being in that lineup, where you guys were both out there in the front court?

07:15 Yeah, we talked about, we talk about that all the time, but, just being out there with him and playing well together, that was really the first time. We haven’t really gone over that that much. And so just being able to get a feel and the flow, I thought we played pretty well together, brought good energy and that’s all we can do.

07:33 When it comes to energy, how much of a responsibility is it for the young guys especially to come out every day and play with that fire?

07:40 It’s huge. We have a vet heavy team and so sometimes, they’re not gonna have it. And that’s just how it is. And us as young guys, we gotta come in, we gotta bring the energy and we can’t have off nights. We gotta bring it every time we’re on the floor.

07:55 Do you guys feel that message from the vets right now?

07:57 Absolutely. They challenge us. We just gotta continue to play with that fire, play with that energy, crash the glass, sprints, all that stuff, and those are uncoachable. Those are just things that provide energy and we just gotta continue to do that.

00:00 Steve, what did you think the biggest issue was tonight?

00:04 STEVE KERR, POSTGAME GSW-DEN: Just the lack of purpose and energy, really, right from the start. Competitive fire, connection, a competitive edge. We didn’t have it.

00:18 What do you think caused that lack of purpose and lack of--?

00:20 I don’t know.

00:23 Tough nights for Jonathan, Moses and Brandin. Just what did you see from them?

00:27 Yeah, the game didn’t go their way, but there has to be some fire in the belly to, to get out of a tough night. It’s tough as a young player when things aren’t going your way and game’s not going your way. It’s easy to get down and you can’t do that in this league. You have to fight and to compete every second. And it didn’t feel like we did that tonight.

00:50 Steve, to your point with younger guys specifically when they’re struggling, like, those three were tonight, is it reps in these kind of road games environments or what do you do to get them out of that?

01:05 There’s always another game in the NBA. We have a huge game Sunday, go home for one game, out on the road for a really tough trip. We gotta go get Sunday. So you turn the page quickly and we got, we got a lot of guys who can play and can compete and, but we need all, all 12, all 13, however many guys get in the game. We need a full level of competitive fight and execution. And I didn’t think we got much of either tonight.

01:35 Could you feel mental lapses from JK and BP and what were the conversations like with them?

01:41 Yeah, I talked to both guys during the game, just to trying to help them get going and we needed to, to do some things offensively to try to generate some pace and some flow, ‘cause the first eight minutes it was just, the ball just stuck and no, no movement, no pace.

02:01 When a team, when you notice that your team doesn’t have the competitive fire that they need, how does that change what you’re trying to do as a coach?

02:09 You, you try to do some things schematically, you pick up full, you maybe trap, maybe you go to zone, change your lineups. I can see, when it’s happening, what’s happening. Pretty tough when it happens against one of the best teams in the league with the best player in the world and they make 16 threes. You’re just swimming upstream the whole time, so it never felt like we had any traction in the game other than that first few minutes of the second quarter and one point game and we immediately give up a 19 to two run with Jokic on the bench. That was the game, right there. And so we’ve got a lot to, to work on, a lot to consider, but we move forward and I like this team a lot. I like our talent. I like our depth. I think we, obviously, need to get Steph back, but I think the biggest thing going forward, we’ll just be trying to develop regular rotation patterns and finding combinations that work.

03:18 How close do you think you are to finding regular rotation patterns?

03:22 I’m not there yet. Obviously, we’ve gotta get Steph back, but if we get him back and we’re fully healthy, then we’ve got some thoughts as to things we can do to, balance out the, the rotations and be a better, more efficient team.

03:41 Do you know what’s next on Al? Is he gonna need--?

03:45 I don’t. Yeah, the foot started bothering him today and so he, he shot around with us this morning, tested it out and just wasn’t right. Obviously, we kept him out.

03:57 If he misses time, I presume that would be more, a little more Draymond at center?

04:01 Yeah, it would have to be. And then, obviously, Trayce. I think Trayce has played really well for us here in the early going and QP as well. So we’ve got, those are our options, yeah.

—

04:10 Quinten, what was Steve’s message to the team after a loss like this?

04:18 QUINTEN POST: Not much, to be honest. Or right now it’s not about Coach. Like, it, it is really about us. We’re, with Steph out, Al out, like, we have a lot of young guys, so it’s really on us to bring the energy and, obviously, we’ve had a tough schedule. But yeah, it is really on us to bring it. We didn’t do a good job of that tonight, but gotta keep digging and we’ll fight ourselves out of this. Gotta keep pushing the ball, play with energy, talk on defense. Have to get back to that and make life easier on our vets and, and we’ll definitely get it done. We just need to flip the switch.

05:02 What’s the, what is the biggest problem on defense right now? Draymond spoke at length about how the defense needs to get better. In your eyes, what can the defense do better that they haven’t been doing?

05:11 I don’t think it’s a lot of X’s and O’s right now. It’s just about energy. We gotta take pride in our individual matchups. Like, we all have to play for each other. We have to try to go at these guys on the defensive end and play with force. And tonight it didn’t feel like, it felt like we just we were passive. We let them attack us and that’s not how you win games. We gotta attack them and make them, like, feel us.

05:41 Do you feel like this jam packed schedule is getting to you guys?

05:45 There’s no excuses. We’re, right now, the guys that are playing are, we’re young. We should have the energy. We should come out and fight. And there’s no, no schedule that excuses that

06:00 Among the young guys, do you guys talk about that, as far as, it’s on us, we need to bring the energy in the effort?

06:05 There are multiple guys that came from the bench tonight that we’re talking about bringing the energy and sometimes it’s tough and it doesn’t go your way, but the guys are in the right mindset and this switch will be flipped. We’ll actually, we’ll flip the switch. We gotta keep bringing it, take it to the fire and just go out there and we’ll make it work. Thank you, guys.

—

06:37 JIMMY BUTLER: It wasn’t where it needs to be. And I think that it has to take a, gotta go up quite a few notches whenever we don’t got Steph out there. Hopefully, we get our guy back, but if he’s out there, you gotta play good, a near perfect game and for sure a high energy game if you wanna have a chance to win.

06:55 How do you bring that energy up?

06:58 Doing all the small things and everybody doing it together as a collective, crashing, diving on the floor, second efforts, all of that is going into the energy plays throughout the game.

07:12 Jimmy, why do you think that specifically to start the year, has been up and down the way it has?

07:20 I don’t make excuses, so I’m not the one for that. I just know that we have to do it, especially whenever Steph is out, but even whenever he’s in, everybody gotta put some high level energy. And I’m not saying one person or two people, everybody as a whole.

07:38 What are you seeing with regards to the defensive breakdowns up to this point?

07:43 Some more effort, you know what I’m saying? Maybe a little bit more KYP at the same time, but defense is all, if you want to do it, whether you’re on the ball, whether you’re in the gap, whether you’re the low man, if you want to do it, you’ll do it.

07:56 What does KYP mean?

07:57 Know Your Personnel.

07:58 Is everything effort versus X’s and O’s right now?

08:02 For us, it’s always gonna be a lot of effort. Like, we have some really smart basketball players, obviously, one of the greatest coaches ever, incredible coaching staff. So it, you can’t even point the blame on them because they put us in a position to be hella successful. It’s on us to go out there and execute it. It’s on us to go out there and play hard as hell inside, it’s on us to go out there and actually compete and win. They do a hell of a job getting us ready, scouts, all of that good stuff. It’s on the guys around this locker room to go out there and compete at high level.

08:33 Does this game Sunday need to set a tone before that six game road trip?

08:37 Hell, every game up to this point is supposed to be one that set the tone. Now what I will say is, and I say this a lot, when you win, everything’s massed and everything’s covered up. So we’ll go out there and win. It’s gonna look like we played hard, it’s gonna look like we executed, so let’s just win and then we’ll take it from there.

🫶💙💛