The Warriors Rotation Adjustment That Could Define Play-In Game vs. Clippers

Golden State has one move it should use to inject more offense into its lineups

Steve Kerr | Robert Edwards-Imagn Images

The Golden State Warriors are 1-3 against the LA Clippers this season, and the main issue has been a lack of offense.

In those four games, the Warriors are shooting 40.9 percent from the floor and 31.8 percent from three.

That's come against a Clippers team that ranks 18th in NBA.com defensive rating. It has improved to 14th since LA traded James Harden and Ivica Zubac, going from a little below average to average.

It shouldn't be this hard to score against a middling unit.

The Warriors don't have many options to inject offense into their lineups. They will play Stephen Curry and Kristaps Porzingis as much as they can. Brandin Podziemski, who has been their hottest offensive player recently, will play heavy minutes.

But they do have one player they can get into their rotation more who could help their offense and perhaps turn a close loss into a close win.

Warriors Should Play Seth Curry 20 Minutes

To get an idea of how bad the Warriors have shot the ball against the Clippers, look at this chart for how their top nine projected play-in rotation players have fared in the four games:

	3PTM	3PTA	3PT%
Podz	8	18	44.4
Steph	10	32	31.3
Horford	6	20	30
Santos	2	7	28.6
Melton	2	12	16.7
Richard	1	6	16.7
Green	2	14	14.3
Porzingis	0	4	0
Payton	0	1	0

Seth Curry went 2-of-4 from three in his 12 minutes in the regular-season finale at Intuit Dome. I'm not sure the Clippers knew the Warriors were allowed to have anyone make 50 percent of their threes.

Jokes aside, Seth is in the top 10 in three-point percentage in NBA history. It's no fluke when he shoots it well.

The issue is he's 6'1" with below-average athleticism for an NBA guard. That makes his a target on defense, and the Warriors will already have their hands full trying to defend without a true wing stopper.

But the pros might outweigh the cons.

The chart above shows the Warriors' projected play-in rotation players are 31-of-114 from three (27.2 percent) against the Clippers. There's some bad luck in play there, but that doesn't mean the Warriors should do nothing about it.

De'Anthony Melton is shooting 29.4 percent from three this season. He's too valuable to outright bench, but Seth can eat into a few of his minutes.

Will Richard is shooting 33.5 percent from three this season, including 28.0 percent since Jan. 5.

Gary Payton II is shooting 29.1 percent from three this season.

The Warriors are already cramped for space because opponents aren't guarding Draymond Green (32.6 percent) from the perimeter. Playing Seth 20 minutes would make the Clippers' job on defense much more difficult, which could result in a better offensive flow.

Should Seth Play with Steph?

I'd lean toward having most of Seth's minutes come while Steph is off the court for defensive purposes, but there's an argument that they should overlap more.

Per Cleaning the Glass, the Steph-Seth lineups have a 158.1 offensive rating in 31 possessions this season. Surprisingly, those lineups have an 84.4 defensive rating.

Both the O rating and D rating rank in the 100th percentile.

Obviously, it's a very small sample size. But pretty much every lineup they can consider playing Wednesday has a small-sample-size asterisk.

Who Gets Fewer Minutes with Seth's Rise?

In my 10-man rotation projection for the play-in game, I had Melton at 32 minutes, Richard and Payton at 14 minutes and Seth at eight minutes.

The simplest solution is to have Seth take Richard's minutes. Considering Richard hasn't scored in his last four games, the rookie might not play anyway.

Frankly, it wouldn't be a surprise if Seth played more minutes than Richard, but what would be surprising is if Seth gets to 20-plus minutes. In 10 games with Golden State this season, he's reached 20 minutes just once, when the severely short-handed Warriors lost to the Lakers on Thursday.

It's not ideal that Seth has such little game experience this season, but despite being underused and perhaps not in great rhythm, he is their best bet to provide offense with a 20-minute workload off the bench.