SAN FRANCISCO — The most stunning thing wasn’t that Jonathan Kuminga dribbled the ball, kept dribbling the ball, didn’t look like he considered passing it for a moment, then shoved his way to the basket while his teammates stood and watched, though all of that was pretty stunning in this Warriors era, I must admit. The real shock was that Steve Kerr, Stephen Curry and the rest of Kuminga’s teammates seemed fine with this.
More to the point: They actually seemed to want this.
Kuminga put up the shot in heavy traffic near the rim and missed in the second quarter of Tuesday’s victory over the Philadelphia 76ers at Chase Center. But Kerr didn’t move from his seat on the bench. The Warriors ran back on defense. Nobody dropped their head. Nobody acted like any rules had been broken. It felt like a normal NBA isolation play that didn’t quite work, but of course, that was all very non-normal in the context of this team’s hoary history of free-flowing, pass-the-ball-quickly-and-move principles. And winning championships.
So yeah, things are looking very different for the Warriors these days. There’s been a necessary, noticeable recalibration after Kerr and the stalwarts stuck to most of the proven ways for months of this struggling season. Right now, things feel more urgent. Things feel much more uncertain and impermanent, but that’s a natural development at some point for any dynasty, or the end of a dynasty.
Of course, the Warriors will look pretty similar and do some similar things for as long as Curry lives, breathes and shoots sublimely from distance. But we’re witnessing a conceptual adaptation. The Warriors are no longer determined to do exactly the same things that have worked for so long — because they haven’t quite worked for several months now.
Really, given the stakeholders and pride involved, the biggest shift is the Warriors deciding there had to be a shift.
“When teams are chasing you for 10 years, at some point they’re going to figure it out, make it tough,” Draymond Green said after the game. “You know, it started to get tough. Steve has always been one of the greatest coaches I’ve ever seen at making adjustments, whether that’s in series, whether that’s in games, whether that’s in seasons.
“He’s one of the greatest at identifying what needs to happen and making those adjustments. … Credit to the guys in the locker room for buying into what those adjustments are. As you can see, as our season has gone on, some roles have changed, and yet everyone is buying into that.”
It’s very clear that Kuminga is the main change agent in all of this. He’s talented enough and hard-working enough for future Hall of Famers to make accommodations. He’s stubborn enough to keep pushing for this. And the Warriors are needy enough at this point to understand that their best shot at playoff relevance is to finally push Kuminga into the spotlight and to live with the results.
As Draymond said, the dynastic veterans carried along some older guys like Andre Iguodala and David Lee in the early days of this run, and now it’s clearly time for Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski, Moses Moody and Trayce Jackson-Davis to help carry some of the main responsibility now. But to get to that point, in Kuminga’s third NBA season, the Warriors coaching staff and veterans had to believe that Kuminga was worth it. And the Warriors coaching staff and veterans had to need Kuminga to do this.
That’s guaranteed Kuminga plenty of playing time, which lately has meant shoving Kevon Looney, one of Kerr’s favorite players ever, to the fringes of the rotation. That’s locked in a commitment to playing Kuminga with Andrew Wiggins, which was a disaster combo early this season, mostly when Draymond was…
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