Brandin Podziemski took 10 shots, made two of them and finished without an assist as the San Antonio Spurs beat the Golden State Warriors 123-85 on Friday night at Frost Bank Center. His eight points tied for the most by any Golden State starter, which says more about the night around him than it does about the night he had.
This was the first full game of the stretch the Warriors have been bracing for. Stephen Curry is expected to miss closer to a month with an oblique tear, and the offense that remains was supposed to run largely through Podziemski and Yaxel Lendeborg.
Ten Shots, Two Makes and Nothing Created for Anyone Else
Podziemski entered Friday averaging 17.3 points and 4.2 assists across his first 10 appearances this season. He produced eight points and no assists in 22 minutes, going 2-for-10 from the field and 2-for-5 from three.
The assist column is the number that matters more than the shooting. He did not commit a single turnover, so this was not a case of a guard losing the handle against pressure — he was careful with the ball and simply never turned a possession into a shot for somebody else.
That is the specific thing his role asked for on Friday. With Curry out, Podziemski was one of two players expected to generate offense rather than finish it, and the Warriors got the finishing attempts without the generating.
He Was Not the Only One, and That Cuts Both Ways
Golden State’s starting five combined for 30 points on 10-of-43 shooting. The team shot 31-of-93 overall, 33.3 percent, and 15-of-41 from three, so no one in the group had a night worth defending.
Lendeborg was worse, finishing 1-for-13. But Lendeborg is a rookie taking on a role he was handed on Wednesday, when Curry left the game at Houston in the first quarter, and Podziemski is the player the Warriors committed to this offseason and the one who had already been producing at a lead-guard level this month.
The opponent is worth stating plainly. San Antonio arrived at 10-2 and on a 10-game winning streak, which is a hard place to hold a first rehearsal of an offense missing its organizing principle.
Monday at New Orleans Is the Real Measurement
Neither Podziemski nor Steve Kerr addressed the shooting in the written coverage available after the game, so this is a reading of a box score and a game situation rather than an account of what either man thought about it.
One game is one game, and 22 minutes in a blowout decided early is not evidence about who Podziemski is. Side Eye Sports graded every Warriors player after Wednesday’s loss in Houston, a game in which the same group competed to the final minutes.
What Friday does establish is a requirement. The Warriors continue the road trip at New Orleans on Monday, and the version of Podziemski they need is the one who creates shots for other people — because if the lead option’s assist column reads zero again, the shooting percentage will stop being the interesting number.
Box score details via the SF Chronicle’s game report by Luca Evans.
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