Santa Cruz survive a close battle versus the OKC Blue
On this throwback edition of TimeOut, I am going to take a look at two ways the Santa Cruz Warriors survived a tough battle against the OKC Blue earlier this month.
For those who may not know the Santa Cruz Warriors defeated the OKC Blue on their home court behind Kendrick Nunn‘s twenty-four points and Golden State Warriors two-way player Damian Lee’s ten rebounds. We will look at two areas that they can learn from in this game and improve from.
Firstly, the team will need to do a better job rebounding the ball on the defensive end.
The Golden State Warriors two-way player Damian Lee was making his name known on both sides of the court. Besides contributing twenty-two of Santa Cruz Warriors 113 points, Lee also led the Warriors in rebounds grabbing ten defensive rebounds for the Sea Dubs which is really impressive.
Lee is currently forty-first in the league for defensive rebounds averaging 4.9 defensive rebounds for the season thus far. Juan Toscano-Anderson also contributed significantly in the rebounds area grabbing five defensive rebounds for the Warriors.
He is currently fifteenth in the league with 91.9% defensive rating grabbing 4.7 rebounds for the season so far. Overall, the Warriors outrebounded the Blue offensively (12-11) and defensively (36-25).
Next, the Warriors will need to improve theri 3-point shooting.
Four players were dominant from three-point range: two-way players Marcus Derrickson and Damian Lee (they were four of seven). Kendrick Nunn was perfect from three-point range shooting four of four from three.
Michael Gbinije also did well from three making three of his four three-pointers. Overall, the Warriors shot sixteen three-pointers out of their twenty-eight attempts.
Their 57.1% shooting from Curry range improved their three-point percentage from 41.8% to 42.7% despite remaining in the third spot for three-point percentage in the league thus far this season.
Furthermore, the Warriors need to ensure that they hit most not if all their points in the paint. The OKC Blue scored forty-four points in the paint while the Sea Dubs scored 26 points.
This was not as shocking as the OKC Blue is second in the league in that area averaging 59.7 points in the paint behind the Long Island Nets (Brooklyn Nets G League affiliate) who is averaging 61.9 points in the paint.
The Sea Dubs, on the other hand, is scoring 49.9 points in the paint which is sixteenth best in the league. The Warriors can prioritize leading the league in more areas but in order to do that they need to make sure they are efficient all over the floor regardless of the opponent’s strong points.
Lastly, we need to talk about turnovers. We know the story- the Warriors didn’t do a great job taking care of the ball, turning over the ball twenty one times while the Blue turned over the ball thirteen times.
Will Cherry led the Sea Dubs in turnovers turning over the ball five times while Warriors assignee Jacob Evans turned over the ball four times. However, what was impressive about the win was that the Warriors scored twenty-seven points off the OKC Blue’s thirteen turnovers.
The Warriors although they are not all the way there, they are learning to score more to combat the high turnover number and other areas of weakness i.e. the lack of blocks. The Warriors are currently 22nd in the league in blocks averaging 4.6 blocks off 6.9 attempts.
Santa Cruz Warriors fans can watch the Sea Dubs battle against the OKC Blue once again on Friday, February 1 on Facebook Live.