{"id":324162,"date":"2025-12-01T14:06:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324162\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T14:06:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:06:14","slug":"as-kuminga-returns-the-warriors-face-a-new-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324162\/","title":{"rendered":"As Kuminga returns, the Warriors face a new challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Want more ways to catch up on the latest in Bay Area sports? Sign up for the Section 415 email newsletter here<\/a> and subscribe to the Section 415 podcast wherever you listen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Warriors missed 20 of their first 21 3-point attempts, went on several multi-minute scoring droughts, and needed both a tremendous all-around game from Jimmy Butler and a herculean effort by Gary Payton II to just sneak past the 3-17 Pelicans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nobody said winning without Steph Curry would be easy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Curry missed his first game with the left quad contusion and muscle strain he suffered on Wednesday night against Houston. He\u2019s set to be re-evaluated next week, before Golden State\u2019s three-game road trip to Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Warriors (11-10) will have to get used to the superstar point guard\u2019s absence, for another game or two at the very least.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jonathan Kuminga returned to the court after missing the prior seven games and hit a pair of big 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, but otherwise looked rusty in the Warriors\u2019 104-96 win over the Pelicans. He alone isn\u2019t the answer to staying afloat without Curry, but Golden State laid some tracks on the way to a route.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMake the game easy,\u201d Butler said after registering 24 points, 10 assists, and eight rebounds. \u201cIf you\u2019re open, shoot it. If not, pass it. Attack. I think that\u2019s the formula for everybody. To be successful, keep the game easy. Especially when 30\u2019s not out there, you have to be damn near perfect.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The biggest key, regardless of Curry\u2019s availability, is reducing turnovers. The Warriors committed only 10 against New Orleans, and are now 10-1 when winning the turnover battle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year, the Warriors struck a healthy balance between their patented motion, split-action offense and spreading out around Butler\u2019s isolation. They\u2019re still searching for the right mix, and likely have to skew more toward the latter as Curry is sidelined.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Warriors\u2019 most successful offense was getting the ball to Butler and letting him go to work. He always insists on making the right basketball play, but Butler will likely have to turn up his scoring dial in the coming games like he did on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"With Steph Curry sidelined, the Warriors will try to run their offense through Jimmy Butler. | Source: Amber Pietz\/The Standard<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely without Steph,\u201d Draymond Green said. \u201cBut we were trying to get him to attack that way from the beginning, he just kept telling us, \u2018They\u2019re loading up.\u2019 So we need to create some other movement. Once everybody else started moving around him, then it opened gaps and he was able to do what he did. So definitely when Steph\u2019s not out there, we need him to be more aggressive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Golden State works on its spacing around Butler in those isolation situations, and Payton in particular feasted against New Orleans. Over and over again, he found pockets of opportunity to cut into the lane, where Butler found him for easy layups. Between backdoor cuts and putbacks, Payton recorded 19 points and 11 rebounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always say he\u2019s a power forward in a point guard\u2019s body,\u201d Steve Kerr said. \u201cHis speed and quickness in the dunker spot is tough for people to handle, but also just his feel down there to create the openings.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Source: NBA.com<\/p>\n

Curry\u2019s injury \u2014 on top of other players in street clothes \u2014 gave Kerr a night to experiment with new lineups. Without Trayce Jackson-Davis (knee) and Al Horford (sciatica), Kerr often played microscopic lineups in an effort to create cleaner looks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most of Kuminga\u2019s 19 minutes came with him as the nominal center, a position novel to the fifth-year wing. Kuminga grabbed one rebound and struggled to make an impact defensively in the paint against bigger Pelicans players. But that lineup construction could be one Kerr turns to again, either out of necessity or to juice up the offense without Curry\u2019s gravitational pull.\u00a0<\/p>\n

5 days ago<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Friday, Nov. 21<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Tuesday, Nov. 18<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Regardless of lineups, the Warriors need to be decisive with the ball. There\u2019s no better example of that than Brandin Podziemski, who has largely struggled to begin his third season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Too often this year, Podziemski has held the ball too long, starting drives with head fakes or jab steps before getting caught in no-man\u2019s land underneath the arc. Against the Pelicans, he was much more efficient with the ball in his hands, either launching a 3 or keeping the offense humming by swinging it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Podziemski finished with 15 points, six assists, and five rebounds.<\/p>\n

\"\"Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski had one of his best all-around games of the season against the Pelicans on Saturday. | Source: Amber Pietz\/The Standard<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought this was one of his best games of the season,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cJust the ball movement, the decision-making. No turnovers, six assists. All-around game for Brandin. That\u2019s the guy we know, that\u2019s the best version of him. Nights like tonight: catch and shoot when he\u2019s open. I love that he took nine 3s. He\u2019s been passing them up this year, pump-faking and driving into the paint. We want him to let it fly. It\u2019s better for our offense, for our rhythm, for our crashing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The results still weren\u2019t stellar, and they\u2019ll need to improve in the short-term. The Warriors scored just 104 points against New Orleans, the 28th-ranked defense in the league and a team that was missing Trey Murphy, Dejounte Murray, Herb Jones, and Jordan Poole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Warriors\u2019 next game is a rematch with the defending champion Thunder, who blasted them by 24 earlier this month at their place. They\u2019ll then travel to Philadelphia before a back-to-back in Cleveland and Chicago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Splitting those four games, especially without Curry, would be an achievement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Any accomplishment will require tweaks in the offensive approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just going to look different,\u201d Podziemski said. \u201cWe got to create advantages a different way. We\u2019re accustomed to playing four-on-three a lot of times when he\u2019s out there and teams are just going to start switching one-through-five. So we just got to create pockets of space in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want more ways to catch up on the latest in Bay Area sports? Sign up for the Section…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2243,17721,6422,355,99,3781,30534],"class_list":{"0":"post-324162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-golden-state-warriors","9":"tag-jimmy-butler","10":"tag-jonathan-kuminga","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-steph-curry","14":"tag-steve-kerr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}