As the Golden State Warriors head into the regular season, their concerns are almost too numerous to fullly spell out here.
This team has a ceiling that, if everyone is healthy and available by the end of the season, is certainly capable of being reached. But the early-season slate, with Kristaps Porzingis still out indefinitely and Stephen Curry undertaking a slow, deliberate ramp-up, is going to depend in large part on their complementary contributors. Those players, while having shown flashes, also have one major problem—turnovers.
Steve Kerr has spoken at length about Golden State's desire to clean up their play on the offensive end of the court this season. A new, five-out oriented offensive approach should help somewhat in that aim.
But Golden State, at the end of the day, can't afford to hurt themselves with sloppy play this season, and there's almost certainly not a singular, catch-all fix to the issues that have plagued them over the past couple of campaigns. If they're going to clean up the turnovers, though, Brandon Williams needs to be part of the solution.
Brandon Williams will be a real ball handler for this team, and he needs to be as clean as possible
If there's one major silver lining to take away from the Warriors' preseason slate, it's that Williams has emerged as a bona fide backup point guard option for Golden State behind Curry.
It's unclear if he'll start in the games that Curry is forced to miss. But at the very least, he represents a player with ball-handling experience to help take on some of the burden that Curry has been forced to face on a night-to-night basis over the past couple of seasons. Across five preseason games, Williams averaged 12.6 points, 1.4 rebounds, and 2.2 assists while shooting 54.8% from the field.
He did average three turnovers, though, and that's a major concern.
Anyone who's seen Williams play at length will tell you that he's far from a perfect player. He's not a volume playmaker in the traditional sense, and he's struggled to shoot consistently from beyond the arc throughout his short career. His offensive game relies primarily on getting to the rim—which isn't necessarily a desirable skill set to depend upon in a smaller guard.
But he was largely able to stay clean last season in an enhanced role for the Dallas Mavericks with Kyrie Irving out, and the Warriors need him to at least replicate that level of play in a similar role with this team. Across 66 games, Williams averaged a career-high 13 points while posting 3.9 assists to just 1.9 turnovers per game—a respectable, if not immaculate, ratio of 2.05.
Replicating even that number over the course of the season would be a massive boon to the Warriors' efforts. Williams also, at least theoretically, has the speed and the on-court activity level to prevent himself from getting blitzed consistently by opposing defenders, leaving room for the complementary playmakers on the bench unit to help ease some of his burden.
The Warriors averaged the 10th most turnovers of any team in the preseason (excluding the London Lions), and they averaged the third-most in the league over the duration of last season. If they have any hope of a complete turnaround in that category, Williams needs to be part of the solution—not the problem.
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