Golden State led Memphis late on Oct. 23, then went without a field goal over the closing minutes and lost 111-108. That collapse is a big reason Steve Kerr’s lineup choices are under review, even though the Warriors have recovered from an 0-3 start, beating the Nuggets and Timberwolves on the road to get to 2-3. Five games in, the rotation looks less broken than short-handed.
Draymond Green at Center Is Paying Off
Kerr’s biggest structural decision was to play Green at the five so his two young forwards could share the floor. That has allowed Gui Santos and Yaxel Lendeborg to be on the court together for 161 possessions, and they have posted a plus-11.4 net rating in that time, per Cleaning the Glass, as Joey Akeley of Sports Illustrated detailed. That is a small sample. It is also the best evidence anyone has, and it points one way.
The rookie is the clearest reason it works. Lendeborg had 31 points and 12 rebounds in Denver, then 26 more in Minnesota. The usual objection to small ball is rebounding, but the Warriors outrebounded Denver 50-36 in that game, with Green at the five and Al Horford the only center off the bench.
The record is also worse than the coaching. The Phoenix loss came with the Warriors resting several key players, including Stephen Curry (right knee), Brandin Podziemski (low back), Draymond Green (low back) and Al Horford (low back). One of the three losses was a scheduled rest night, not a lineup that failed.
The Closing Fives Keep Going Cold
The case against Kerr is about the final minutes. Against the Grizzlies, from 5:17 to 1:24 to go, the Warriors had Curry, De’Anthony Melton and Brandin Podziemski on the floor together with Lendeborg and either Green or Graham Ike in the frontcourt. Kerr keeps choosing Melton’s ball-handling and point-of-attack defense over a bigger body like Santos, and in that game the choice coincided with a 17-0 Memphis run.
There is also a bench group that has no defense. The lineup of Curry, Melton, Gary Payton II, Georges Niang and Green has a bad rebounding rate, and the reason is not hard to see: the players stand 6’2″, 6’2″, 6’2″, 6’6″ and 6’7″. Kerr chose that group. Nobody forced it on him.
The trouble with the crunch-time critique is that it rests on one game. Santos did not play in Minnesota, ruled out hours before tipoff with left knee tendinitis, so Kerr’s options were limited. Shot-making mattered more than personnel in both endings: Curry went 1-for-9 in the closing five minutes of the two games. No rotation fixes that.
Change One Bench Group, Keep the System
Kerr is mostly right. His core structure has the best numbers on the team, and he has kept untested bigs out of games that matter: in the Denver win, he did not put Graham Ike or Charles Bassey in the main rotation. He is doing this without Jimmy Butler III and Moses Moody, both reported out indefinitely, and with Kristaps Porziņģis away from the team and not expected to play for Golden State again. A short roster forces some lineups that look bad on paper.
The one clear mistake is the five-man group with three 6’2″ guards, and it can be fixed without touching the core. Kerr should drop it before it plays another meaningful stretch. The Melton-versus-Santos question at the end of games is still open, because Kerr has had exactly one close game with Santos available to decide it.
That gets tested soon. Santos’s next opportunity to play comes Friday night against the Los Angeles Lakers, though he was listed as doubtful. If he is active and the game is close, who Kerr puts on the floor for the last four minutes will show whether he has learned from Memphis or doubled down on Melton.
Sources: Joey Akeley of Sports Illustrated, Cleaning the Glass
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