How lineup changes and tactical adjustments helped the Warriors exact revenge on the Wolves

Dubs split their home series against the Wolves.

With Andrew Wiggins out of the Golden State Warriors’ rematch against the Minnesota Timberwolves due to an ankle impingement, Steve Kerr was forced to concoct a fresh starting lineup that covered multiple bases — one that had enough offensive juice and the right combination of personnel to slow down the Wolves’ offensive attack centered around Anthony Edwards. As such, Kerr decided to throw out the recent usual suspects in Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Jonathan Kuminga. Rounding out the lineup: Buddy Hield at the two and Gary Payton II at the three, tasked with the assignment of marking Edwards in Wiggins’ place. That also meant Green had to slot in at the five — something Kerr has been reticent to rely on given Green’s workload and recent physical ailments.

When asked about Hield’s rejuvenation against the Wolves — in which he scored 27 points on 18 shots (7-of-13 on threes), 75% True Shooting, and was a team-best plus-17 — Kerr added that his decision to include Hield and Payton with Curry was born out of consultation with the Warriors’ analytics department.

“Our analytics department really gave it a good look,” Kerr said. “Pabail Sidhu (Warriors Vice President of Basketball Analytics and Innovation) does a great job. I asked him yesterday, ‘What do you think (we should do)?’ He said, ‘Maybe try Buddy and Gary in the starting lineup.’ He gave me some numbers and we know that Gary and Steph are off-the-charts good together. But the three-man combination, you get your two best shooters and best perimeter defender on the floor at the same time. I give Pabail a lot of credit, it was a great suggestion... We started Draymond at the five, I’ve said I don’t really want to start him at the five. We have a lot of interesting and difficult decisions but we’re learning a lot about our team, for sure.”

Indeed, the numbers have looked good with Curry, Hield, and Payton on the floor this season. The Curry and Hield duo, in particular, has worked wonders offensively. Heading into the second game against the Wolves (in non-garbage time, courtesy of Cleaning the Glass), the Warriors have looked like world beaters on both ends of the floor:

• 371 possessions
• 122.1 offensive rating
• 97.5 defensive rating
• plus-24.6 net rating

Adding Payton to the Curry-Hield pairing reduces the number of possessions; not a lot of instances this season have involved all three of them together prior to tonight’s game. But the numbers have nevertheless remained stratospherically good, if not slightly better:

• 170 possessions
• 120.6 offensive rating
• 92.3 defensive rating
• plus-28.3 net rating

The on-off data provides Kerr with logical backing behind his decision to start Hield and Payton next to Curry, but a surface-level understanding of what has ailed the Warriors is enough to justify his decision. With no Wiggins — and Kuminga needing to slot in at the four in order to coexist with Green — it was left to Payton to guard Edwards. Furthermore, a Warriors offense on life support was in dire need of defibrillation, and the lowest-hanging fruit available to them in that regard would be to pair Curry and Hield from the get-go.

Both of them ended up providing the jolt of electricity on offense the Warriors needed. Curry supplemented Hield’s performance with 30 points on 18 shots and 65.7% True Shooting. There’s no doubt that two high-level shooters being on the floor at the same time not only opens up shots for teammates — it opens shots up for each other. Screening actions off the ball for each other, in particular, creates space for at least one party whenever two defenders are either reticent to switch off of their assignments or don’t execute clean switches, such as on this after-timeout play (called “Twirl” by the Warriors) where Curry screens for Hield before receiving a screen himself:

More importantly — with Curry being the nightly target of defensive gameplans that, for lack of a better and professional term, could be simply called “Anyone but Steph” — having Hield out there serves a two-fold purpose: 1) provide him with open looks to help him break out of a shooting slump; 2) relieve pressure being thrown toward Curry’s way and complete the advantages Curry creates through putting the defense in rotation:

In addition to personnel combinations playing a role in the result being different this time around, the Warriors made it a point to switch tactics — by making it tough for the Wolves to not switch Rudy Gobert out on the perimeter against Curry-centered screening actions. Gobert had his way in the first contest by being his usual all-world rim protecting self, with the Warriors failing to budge him away from his comfort zone as a paint roamer. The simple workaround to that was by literally going around Gobert through involving him in the pick-and-roll and forcing him to step up against Curry around the screen. This drew Gobert away from the rim and opened opportunities for Curry to turn the corner, while also opening the roll with Gobert finding it difficult to cover both the ball and the roll:

In contrast to the first game against the Wolves — during which there were three separate instances of the Warriors failing to score for at least eight consecutive possessions — the Warriors found a stretch of 12 consecutive scoring possessions in the third quarter of tonight’s game that erased a nine-point halftime deficit. Key during that stretch was Payton and his defense on Edwards. Despite a size disadvantage, Payton compensated with screen navigation and pesky physicality at the point of attack. While Edwards still managed to score 27 points on 67.9% True Shooting, Payton — and in turn, the Warriors’ defense and transition offense — had some of his best moments against Edwards:

While Kerr did make sure to mention his reticence to play Green at the five, it mostly paid off against the Wolves’ more conventional big lineups with Gobert as Green’s counterpart. Not only did it allow Payton to take more risks against Edwards with Green behind to act as a monitor of sorts (note how Green drops back initially below on the screening action for Edwards, before stepping up to help Payton upon realizing his teammate falls behind on his navigation):

It allowed Green to act as the last line of defense, akin to the role his counterpart and nemesis Gobert plays quite naturally — and being able to play that role despite being “limited” with five fouls. However, Green showed no fear with a couple of his stops at the rim in the fourth quarter:

As an added bonus for Green, being matched up with Gobert allowed him to have the last laugh over his nemesis — with a bit of help from a Curry inverted screen:

While the process was funky at times and execution was far from perfect, Kerr pushed the right buttons to place the personnel needed in order for the Warriors to exact immediate revenge upon the Wolves, despite lineup and rotation consistency — or some semblance of it — remaining a goal to be achieved rather than it being the Warriors’ reality.