For the first time in three years, the Warriors are moving on to the second round of the postseason after putting the Nuggets away. They’ll either play the Memphis Grizzlies or the Minnesota Timberwolves.
They did it by finally winning their first closeout game in the postseason since the 2019 Western Conference Finals. Of course, it wasn’t easy. Closeout games are almost never easy.
But in this particular game, the Warriors struggled quite a bit. After building a small lead against the Nuggets in the first half, the Warriors fell down by as much as 10 going into the second.
But the wild part isn’t that the Nuggets built a double-digit lead — it’s who they did it against.
Remember the Warriors’ new “death lineup” everyone has been talking about? The Nuggets were absolutely cooking against it on Wednesday.
The lineup of Jordan Poole, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins had a +34.4 net rating going into their closeout game against the Nuggets, per NBA.com’s stats tool. In Game 5 their net rating together was -37.5 in 7 total minutes played together.
Now, there are lots of caveats here. This is very obviously a super small sample pulled from a super small sample. They’ve only played five games together in the postseason so far and a seven-minute span within five games isn’t something we should make a big deal out of.
But at the same time, there were identifiable weaknesses in this lineup that opponents will surely pick apart in this lineup.
The biggest issue was its size — or a lack thereof. That was an issue that bore itself out through rebounding. The Nuggets won on the glass 50-37 which is a solid margin, but it only tells half the story. They also had 14 offensive rebounds in total, which is a huge number.
When you dig even deeper you see the Nuggets held the Warriors to a defensive rebounding rate of 50% when their “death lineup” was on the court. That means during those 7 minutes the Warriors only rebounded 50% of those Nuggets misses on defense. League average defensive rebounding rate for the regular season was 76.8%.
Basically, the Warriors were dreadful at finishing off defensive possessions in Game 5. The Nuggets’ size was just too much. Charles Barkley put it perfectly when talking about how Aaron Gordon was the Nuggets’ key to victory.
"Aaron Gordon should be killing them little munchkins." 😂
Chuck talks about how Gordon is the key for the Nuggets. pic.twitter.com/AcCeicW3UQ
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) April 28, 2022
“They put them 4 lil dudes out there. He is bigger than everybody else…[The Warriors] are great on one end of the floor but they can’t rebound the ball and they’ve got no size.”
Barkley was exactly right. It’s how Aaron Gordon got five offensive rebounds in the game. That lack of size also led to easy offensive boards like this one for Nikola Jokic.
Nikola Jokic just doing it all on this possession pic.twitter.com/TvUQAhrPVP
— Jackson Frank (@jackfrank_jjf) April 28, 2022
That’s the exact thing the Warriors’ death lineup has no defense against. They’re just too small to rebound and closeout possessions. They can score like nobody’s business and they might get the initial stop. But if you’re a big enough team, you’ll be able to take advantage of that.
The Warriors figured that out and countered it with their original starting lineup to give them a bit of size with Kevon Looney. That move won them the game.
So now, moving forward, Golden State is faced with a big question. Steph Curry is starting again. But does that mean you have to feature this new lineup? Or do you go back to what works and keep your death lineup as a curveball teams have to be ready for?
I’m not quite sure what the answer is. But the Warriors should probably figure that out before they figure out who they’re playing next.
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