KERR: Kuminga “gotta be better on closeouts”; 3 = sprinting; Melton ok; positionless: KD/Andre/Shaun

2 Comments

1. @LetsGoWarriors 5 days ago

   00:00 General roster situation right now. Where are you and health update, if there's any?
   00:06 Everybody practiced today, right Raymond (Ridder of Warriors PR)? Nobody missed practice. Everybody practiced. Health-wise, we're good. Wiggs came out of that game the other night really well. We just had a great practice. And roster-wise we haven't made any decisions on the back end. But we feel like we have a pretty good handle on our team.
   00:38 I'm sure you see tomorrow night as a bit of a dress rehearsal. What do you want to see out of this team before going into Portland and everything?
   00:46 Yeah, it's a case where we know the next one counts after this. So let's just be sharp with the stuff we've been teaching, the rotations defensively, the coverages defensively and then getting into our stuff with precision and force. I loved the running the other night, made or missed. We really pushed the ball well early in the game and I thought that set a tone. And so I just want to see more of that. And we'll continue to address the mistakes that are inevitably made and just try to clean that up. But I think we're in a good position to be ready for that Portland game Wednesday night.
   01:32 You just brought up the running, but how pleased are you after five games with setting an identity, like, this preseason because it feels like you guys did that from the start of Hawaii to all the way through now.
   01:42 Well, yeah, we had a — I would say a little slip up in the middle of it all which is totally normal. I thought the Sacramento home game was not our best. And then I thought the Detroit game, when they would score, the ball was bouncing three or four times and we can't have that either. It's just way harder to score against a set defense in this league than it is in transition for everybody. So pace is everything. And the guys are starting to really catch on.
   02:17 You mentioned that everyone practiced today. I just wanted to check in on De'Anthony 'cause his back was bothering him a bit, like, no concern there?
   02:24 Nope, he was — he went full today.
   02:27 How much conditioning has been baked into these practices, just kind of naturally?
   02:35 it depends what day we're talking about. Today, there was a lot. We played a lot of live, both transition and half-court today and we did a lot of defensive drill work, live against coaches. So not me or Ron, but some of the younger coaches and it was, yeah, a high conditioning day, but we'll have other practices that are more walkthroughs and skill work and just kind of depends day-to-day.
   03:06 I guess just generally speaking, to play fast requires a certain level of conditioning, right? Just how would you gauge that at this point of the season, just a preseason with where guys are at and how does that kind of come along throughout the course of the year?
   03:20 Yeah, that's the tricky part is once we get to Wednesday we're not gonna have many practices like this one. And so you have to take advantage of them in camp when they're available to you, which we've done. And if you do that, then the guys build up their conditioning to the point where they're just about ready. In my experience the first week or so, the guys who are playing 30-plus minutes, it — they're not quite there yet, but they get there that first week.
   03:59 Pretty much every team in the preseason says things like, "We want to shoot more threes. We want to play faster. We want to improve our defense," all things that are valid and things that you guys want to do. But what makes you confident that you'll be one of the teams that actually establishes those things and carries it into the regular season?
   04:16 Yeah it's a great point. Everybody in the offseason, their guys get bigger, stronger and faster and hungrier, every team. So you make a good point. We are pushing it every day in practice. We're talking about our identity. We want to be feisty. We want to be really tough defensively and scrappy and get to the loose balls. But it doesn't mean anything unless we do it. So I'm confident we'll do it because we've got 13 possible rotation players and only 10 spots. So if you don't do it you come out.
   04:51 Steve, you've talked previously about the importance of Jonathan being able to play 3 in addition to 4 and that you've thought of him as a 4 in the past. What has he — has he done enough to to convince you he can play 3 and what specifically does that mean, handling the ball better, shooting threes better, defending the perimeter better? What goes into that in your mind?
   05:16 Well, the first thing for us is pace. So the other night he played the 3. And we — he played fast. As soon as there was a change of possession, he was sprinting. He has to do that. We can't be a half-court team and play lineup combinations that don't make sense in terms of spacing. But if we play fast, then a lot of that stuff is mitigated. And if we are tough defensively, then a lot of that stuff is mitigated. So he's got to be better defensively for sure, making sure he's in the shell and and not leaking out of our shell, making sure he's on a string with the other guys. He's gotta be better on his closeouts the last couple games. He's been blown by a few times. We've talked to him about it. But what I loved about that last game is the force and it came from his speed running in both directions. That makes up for for a lot of stuff. And so that's the number one priority for me.
   06:23 And this distinction between 3 and 4, at a time when we've been hearing for years of how basketball is becoming position-less in some ways, it sounds like that distinction is still critical to you and looking at your lineup and the puzzle, as you call it sometimes, or is the game becoming more position — how close is it?
   06:42 It is becoming positionless and I would describe a lot of teams out there as positionless. Boston is positionless, a lot of guys who can all dribble and have the size to guard multiple spots, that kind of stuff. We have been positionless in the past with Kevin and Andre and Shaun Livingston, Klay, all kind of able to do lots of things. We didn't really designate a 3 or a 4. But if we're going to play Trayce and Draymond or Loon and Draymond then you gotta have a 3, right? It's — it kind of comes down to shooting. If you're going to play a more traditional old school, two-big lineup, then you're gonna have a more defined 2 and 3.
   07:40 So the other night, essentially Wiggins was the 2.
   07:43 Wiggins was the 2, JK was the 3, Draymond was the 4, Trayce was the 5. And you don't see much of that in the NBA today. But one of the reasons we're looking at it is because it's got great size and length. And so if that group can be great defensively and run, then it can work. But if not, then it won't work.
   08:06 Did you like the way it looks? It kind of speaks to — it seems like you got coming away and dream on guys who can do a bunch of different things.
   08:13 Yeah and that's kind of the point of playing with pace, that you're not playing against a half-court set defense. If we tried to put that line up out there and just run high pick-and-roll, yeah, that's not gonna work because you just don't have the spacing. But if you play that lineup and get deflections and rebounds and you get out and run and you get to spacing and then the ball starts to move, then you can have a lot of success.
   08:39 I'm curious from your perspective, which came first, the roster and then the ideology or the ideology and you built the roster around now becoming Paul Westhead?
   08:48 I don't think Paul Westhead's teams played defense, did they? At least not the Loyola Marymount version. But his Lakers teams —
   09:00 You're the new guru of go.
   09:01 Yeah, that's right. Look, this is not — this is not a huge shift for us. Like, we've always wanted to play fast. I think we're — So the answer is somewhere in between. It's — We've — we finished last year saying we've got to get better-organized offensively. We can't just expect to run the — some of the random actions that we've run over the years, expect everybody to understand it. So we're — we started that way. Then you get to the roster where you add some players and, in effect, you get younger. And then you're thinking about playing Wiggs and JK together. How can we best utilize their skills and put them together. That's what you come up with, is kind of let's play faster, but let's get better organized. That's probably the best way to explain it.
   10:10 And then you mentioned 13 guys, effectively 10 spots. We know an NBA season will never afford you actually 13 guys to work from. But is this a fun part of the job or the worst part of the job —
   10:21 No.
   10:22 –having to figure this out?
   10:22 Yeah the worst part is having — assuming everybody's healthy going into Wednesday night, the worst part is telling three, at least two, maybe three — we have a lot of very worthy position, rotation players — that they're not in the plans that night. The best part is when those guys aren't available and you can still play with depth and try to play the way we're playing and feisty defensively, sprinting, running like we have the depth to do that for the season but.
   10:58 no fun telling guys that — especially guys who have earned it. Because I would say, including Lindy Waters, I think we have 13 players who have earned a spot in the rotation.
   11:14 You've used the word feisty now twice to describe defense. I think we all kind of know what that means. But to you, what does it mean?
   11:20 Feisty means multiple efforts. It means getting to the loose balls first. It means being proactive rather than reactive. Those are the things we're looking for.
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2. @alanarriaga6204 5 days ago

   Glad to see Kerr is holding kuminga accountable for his hasty and messy defense. Kuminga has the physical attributes to be a staunch defender in his own right, similar to wiggs, he just needs to be more disciplined and patient .