-
Kendra Andrews, ESPN
SAN FRANCISCO — Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry desperately needs some help from his teammates.
And his team knows it.
“No question, we need some scoring and some playmaking elsewhere,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said.
Curry dropped 38 points in the Warriors’ 116-110 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday night — his sixth 30-point game this season. Meanwhile, only once has he had a teammate finish with at least 20 points: Dario Saric against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Nov. 3.
Curry has also outscored any other player on the Warriors by at least five points in all 11 games this season, the longest streak to begin a season since Michael Jordan in 1987-88 (11), according to ESPN’s Statistics & Information.
Saturday was the fifth time in 11 games that Curry had doubled his closest teammate in scoring, according to ESPN’s Stats & Information. That’s already more often than he did it all last season.
Golden State is desperately missing the supplementary scoring from Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins, who finished with 16 and six points, respectively, and have both gotten off to slow starts this season.
“There’s always been a certain approach to guarding us. For years you know where attention is going to be,” Curry said. “Usually try to blitz me in a pick-and-roll, stay body-tight on Klay … whatever the case is we have to make adjustments. We can’t just keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.”
“It’s not a panic or anything,” Curry continued. “It’s just a matter of getting a little smarter and a little bit more organized.”
According to Draymond Green, the onus of getting the group more organized falls on him and Chris Paul.
“Chris [and I] got to do a better job of making sure we’re getting into things,” Green said. “When Steph’s got it going, he’s got it going. He’s just moving. It’s on us to realize that and learn how to also use him to get other guys’ looks as well.”
Earlier in this young season, it appeared as though the Warriors were finally in a position to not just survive, but possibly thrive in the non-Curry minutes this season because of the team’s bench production. That effort was — and is — led by Paul.
Golden State ranks sixth in bench scoring with 41.1 points per game, but its scoring has been inefficient, ranking 24th in the league in field goal percentage (42.1%) and 25th on 3-pointers (30.5%).
However, since the Warriors started their six-game home stand Saturday, any offense outside of Curry has been hard to generate.
According to Green, this isn’t a matter of the Warriors still trying to figure their game or their new roster out. There have been flashes, particularly during a five-game stretch after dropping their first game of the season.
Instead, it’s just a matter of execution.
“We as players have to do better,” Green said. “When we’re playing well, players get the credit … when you’re playing bad, players have to f—ing take the blame as well. We can come up here and point a bunch of fingers … at the end of the day we play basketball and it’s our [job] to figure it out and play better.”
A few days before Sunday’s game, Kerr said there were no imminent plans to change his lineups or rotations. But, after the loss to Minnesota — in which his rookies Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson Davis almost gave them a chance to win in the final minutes — Kerr didn’t appear closed off to the idea of change.
“I like everyone that I’m playing, but if we struggle, then we’ve got to get guys out there who are going to give us a spark,” Kerr said.
“Everything is on the table for us for adjustments,” Curry added. “When you’ve lost three straight, you have to make adjustments. I don’t know if it’s a rotation thing or whatever the case is, but everything is on the table and everyone has to be ready to step in.”
Source: www.espn.com