On Jonathan Kuminga and Andrew Wiggins grounding and pounding the Rockets into submission

Without Steph Curry, the Dubs’ two wings took matters into their own hands.

A quick peek at Jonathan Kuminga’s effectiveness as a pick-and-roll ball handler according to Synergy paints a picture of someone who isn’t all too effective in the pick-and-roll. Heading into the game against the Houston Rockets, Kuminga tallied 85 possessions with the ball in his hands in pick-and-roll situations — a low number shining a lens on his role on offense and in the overall pecking order. Of those 85 possessions, the Golden State Warriors have scored a total of 66 points, whether it’s Kuminga himself scoring or someone else involved in the action finishing the play (i.e., the roll man or a third party). That translates to 0.776 points per possession (PPP), which isn’t an excellent number.

However, if you were to watch Kuminga on a couple of possessions where he was tasked with scoring and creation off of the pick-and-roll against the Rockets without the aforementioned context, you wouldn’t think of him as a mediocre pick-and-roll operator. Without Steph Curry to create scoring opportunities and Draymond Green to connect the dots between initiation and finishing, Kuminga was slotted into the starting lineup in order to shoulder and share that burden with Andrew Wiggins. Both of them could score given the right context and appropriate situations, but their shared weakness of having coin-flippy handles places a ceiling on their ability to be bona fide scorers and creators.

In a sense, Steve Kerr flipped several coins tonight in trusting Kuminga and Wiggins to handle the ball. He also helped them along in terms of simplifying their reads and decisions while trying to mask their aforementioned weakness. It wasn’t perfect — in particular, Wiggins had several possessions of getting stripped during drives, something that has also plagued Kuminga throughout his career — a case of exposing the ball too often without the requisite craft to either bypass the strips or draw a foul. But the instances of “heads” outnumbered the instances of “tails,” enough for Kuminga and Wiggins to make a difference and power the Warriors to a 15th straight win over the Rockets.

Kuminga, in particular, showed maturity and poise well beyond his 22 years, something that’s been sought out from him over his four years in the NBA. Perhaps it was being slotted into a role he feels that he deserves: as a scoring option and main ball handler. Kuminga made every case for that being a semi-norm, even with Curry being around. He made plenty of big arguments in his favor tonight, but none was bigger than a crucial after-timeout play where Kerr was able to get Kuminga the ball and rope in the smaller Fred VanVleet into switching onto Kuminga and forcing him to defend a drive.

According to Kerr after the game, that was the plan he had in mind:

Kerr’s mention of “ghost” screens was an attempt to take advantage of the Rockets’ switch-everything scheme. A simple mistake in executing those switches would’ve left a player open while cutting toward the rim; at the very least, it would allow Kuminga to get the switch he wants onto VanVleet, which happens after the second ghost screen by Wiggins. Note how Dillon Brooks — wanting to prevent Wiggins from slipping toward the rim after the screen to beat the switch — drops back ever so slightly, which helps Kuminga gain the angle with his drive to the rim against VanVleet:

Another instance of Kuminga’s patience and craft in the pick-and-roll came on this possession:

No contact was made on the screen, but none was necessary in the instance above. Aaron Holiday chose to go over on the screen by Kevon Looney, given that Kuminga had buried a couple of threes against defenders going under the screen. The conventional line of thought for defenses would be to stay the course and stick to the scouting report if it tells you to go under on a particular player, no matter how well he’s been shooting. But Holiday makes that choice with the previous shots in consideration, making Kuminga’s drive against Steven Adams easier (helped by patience and finishing chops).

While Kuminga may have made his shots against “under” coverage in by the Rockets, his history as a pull-up shooter justifies that coverage choice more often than not. Defenders ducking under screens provides Kuminga with more options than just settling for jumpers — he can drive off of the small window that creates an angle for him to burst through the lane and challenge bigs, or put his defender in a compromising defensive position that doesn’t allow them to properly stop his lane excursions:

Wiggins, on the other hand, has been a more effective pick-and-roll operator this season based on Synergy tracking: on slightly fewer possessions (71), the Warriors have scored 1.085 PPP with Wiggins as the pick-and-roll ball handler prior to the game against the Rockets. While Wiggins can start possessions as the ball handler and receive a ball screen straight up, Kerr has had to provide Wiggins with a bit of schematic help in terms of getting him on the move, providing him with downhill momentum, and letting him get to Point B without coughing up the ball somewhere along the way from Point A:

Otherwise, it was a matter of whether Wiggins was able to keep possession of the ball during his drives or turning it over due to getting stripped or losing control. If he was able to get close to the rim with the ball still in his hands, it became a matter of finishing:

Without Curry to draw attention while handling the ball, it fell to Kuminga and Wiggins to collapse defenses and make sound decisions with the ball in their hands. For the most part, Wiggins made the decision to score. But if the opportunity was there, Wiggins was able to dish the ball to the open man.

The attention he draws below upon driving leaves Moses Moody open — but not before Moody stays put for a beat in the paint to set the backscreen in “Spain” or “Stack” pick-and-roll action:

On Kuminga’s end, the patience he displays while reading the defense and making his decision off of what defenders decide to throw at him made a discernible difference:

A fact that also applied to Wiggins on this possession — helped by Kuminga cutting into open space generated by Wiggins’ advantage creation:

In terms of points per 100 possessions, the Warriors remained unspectacular offensively (103.1 offensive rating). But the offense they were able to squeeze out from Kuminga (33 points — a career high — on 62.5% on twos, 50% on threes, 66.7% on free throws, and 67% TS) and Wiggins (23 points on 45.5% on twos, 75% on threes, 57.1% on free throws, and 63.6% TS) was just enough to supplement a defensive performance that saw them limit the Rockets to 95.9 points per 100 possessions in what was a low-possession grindfest, in which Kuminga and Wiggins ground the Rockets down with their one-two punch of controlled aggression.