Though the Golden State Warriors have been known for closing out close games in recent years – the team has fallen off quite a bit since their glory days. This season, the Dubs’ numbers in the clutch are… not great.
They aren’t horrible, by any means. The Warriors have a 5-5 record in ‘clutch’ games and fall in the middle of the pack in most metrics. However, they shoot just 42.2 percent in big moments and have made some pretty sizeable mistakes with the game on the line.
For starters, we all saw Draymond Green heave a halfcourt shot with seven seconds to spare against San Antonio. This came after a shortsighted play call from Steve Kerr. And, this isn’t the first time they lost a game due to questionable decision making.
The Warriors dropped a close game to the Dallas Mavericks earlier this week after doubling Luka Doncic for no reason at the end of the shot clock. This decision left Maxi Kleber wide open to put the game out of reach.
The Golden State Warriors haven’t been great at closing out games this year but that should be expected of a young team.
This isn’t anything to be overly concerned about. Though the Warriors have two of the best payers in the NBA playing in the latter half of their primes, this team is still mostly full of young and inexperienced prospects.
There’s a lot to learn when it comes to winning basketball games for Kelly Oubre and Andrew Wiggins. They’ve never been in winning environments and the learning curve is steep in the NBA. Don’t even get me started on guys like Damion Lee and Juan Tuscano-Anderson, as they are learning on the fly in their first few NBA seasons.
As for individual members of the team, Curry leads everyone (duh) with 36 points in the clutch. He’s shooting just 9-of-22 in these moments but the degree of difficulty on most of his attempts is just ridiculous.
The next closest person is Damion Lee with only 10 points. Though, he is shooting 3-of-4 in the clutch – with a buzzer-beating shot to beat Chicago under his belt. The real culprits of the Warriors’ struggles would be Oubre, Wiggins and Green – who are shooting a combined 8-for-26.
Golden State will have to help Curry out here if they want to start closing out games. We have to imagine this will happen eventually as the team grows more comfortable in these situations. For now, the Dubs will have to take their losses as lessons and keep pushing for improvement.