Golden State Warriors suffered from lack of shot creation in Play-In

It has been a few days but the pain of missing the NBA Playoffs after a long season still lingers for the Golden State Warriors. This team was hard to define as they seemingly performed drastically differently each night. One thing is certain, however, a lack of shot creators led to their downfall.

Aside from turnovers, the Golden State Warriors’ lack of additional shot creation was their downfall in the Play-In.

It was a present problem all season long. Unless your name was Stephen Curry, the defense wasn’t too interested in guarding you. Literally, members of the Warriors not wearing No. 30 were routinely left wide-open by opponents. This worked fairly well — Warriors not named Curry shot the league’s ninth-worst 3-point percentage (37.7 percent) when ‘wide-open’ according to NBA.com.

But, the Dubs’ issues were much more than simply not hitting open shots. In a commitment to motion offense, other members of the Warriors had the ball in their hands quite a bit. Combine this with Curry being harassed by defenders at every point in the game and pressure for others to create shots mounted pretty quickly. And, unfortunately, the Dubs’ supporting cast did not respond to that pressure very well.

It was common, specifically in the Play-In, for teams to overload Curry on pick-and-roll plays and leave Draymond Green wide-open on the roll. This action led to plenty of turnovers from Curry himself but also from Green when he caught the ball in the middle of the key. His reluctance to shoot made it easy for passes to be intercepted by drop coverage — and when he did decide to shoot, it didn’t go very well. Green shot just 5-for-16 in the two Play-In games.

The rest of the Warriors weren’t too hot either. Kent Bazemore was 7-for-22 and Juan Toscano-Anderson was 4-for-12 from the field while Andrew Wiggins was 2-for-9 from the 3-point line. Jordan Poole was perhaps the best second-option at times, but even he shot just 10-of-20 (50 percent) in the two games.

It was incredibly difficult for the Warriors to free up opportunities for Curry when the defense just didn’t care about anyone other than him. This will be somewhat resolved by the return of Klay Thompson but it is obvious the front office needs to surround Curry with more scorers in order to avoid a repeat of this season.