Warriors must fix their help defense after Walker Kessler’s dunk fest

The array of injuries that have hit the Golden State Warriors' frontcourt early on has left 6'6" Draymond Green vulnerable against much taller and bulkier players. At 36 years old, Green is still an elite defender, but he isn't the same as he was a decade ago. Assigning him the burden of dealing with seven-footers on his own is neither a fair nor viable strategy.

Coach Steve Kerr pointed out after his team's 127-105 drubbing in Los Angeles Wednesday night that he didn't consider the uncertainty surrounding Kristaps Porzingis' health a factor. They've been without him since the first day of practice. They are used to playing without their seven-footer. It would obviously be a boost – both offensively and defensively – but the Warriors put a plan in place to deal with those big men despite not having theirs.

Connectedness was the word that came up quite often during training camp. The meaning behind it is that given their clear lack of personnel at the center position, the Warriors would need to operate as a unit, as a five-man string, to stop opposing centers from having a field day at the rim. Against the Lakers in their season opener, Draymond was left on his own. His matchup against 7'1" Walker Kessler was lopsided from a physical standpoint, but many plays didn't have to do with that blatant size mismatch. Instead, they were the result of multiple defensive breakdowns.

The initial plan to limit the inevitable havoc wreaked by Luka Doncic's and Austin Reaves' deadly drives to the basket was straightforward: clog up the paint, force Luka and Reaves to finish everything at the rim without sending them to the line, put pressure on the shooters from the weak side to make their threes, and keep Kessler in check.

Things didn't go according to plan – at all

Not only did Kessler absolutely torch the Warriors for 26 points, nine rebounds and two blocks on 12-of-12 shooting with 11 dunks, but both Reaves and Luka repeatedly, and with ease, found their way to the free-throw line. The Warriors' careless and uber-aggressive defense turned into 19 trips to the line. Unsurprisingly, they converted every single one of those 19 free throws. The rest of the Lakers went 5-for-8 from the charity stripe.

"We were completely undisciplined," Kerr commented on the way his team defended Luka and Reaves.

Let's go back to those 11 dunks by Kessler. With the exception of a few, basically every single one of those dunks was the consequence of bad help defense, not helping the player that was guarding Kessler and had to help because the perimeter defenders got blown by. Multiple times, Warriors defenders would get caught in between putting a body on the big man and staying with their weak-side matchup. Almost every time down the floor, those situations led to an easy alley-oop dunk. Kessler tallied at least four of them.

The clearest example of the three clips I highlighted below is the one involving De'Anthony Melton as the help defender on the weak side (the one with the Warriors leading 15-13). As Doncic drove by Gary Payton II, Green, who was about to rotate to help his teammate, signaled to Melton to cover him and tag Kessler. Instead, Melton hesitated between bumping into the big man to bother him or staying with his shooter in the corner. Doncic read the play easily and lobbed the ball up in the air for Kessler, who routinely threw it down. Frustrated after the play, Green let Melton know he should have been covering him.

Reaves, who was the shooter in the corner, might have drained that open three from the corner, yes. He shot 36% on over six attempts last season. I don't know Kessler's percentage off alley-oops, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was at 100%. In the restricted area, Kessler is a career 75% shooter. Defensive possessions constantly came down to a split-second decision, and in that case Melton made the wrong one. The team as a whole ended up on the wrong end of a lot of those.

"Dray is a guy that's always there for us," Gui Santos said on Thursday. "If somebody drives to the rim, he's going to be there. So the next step, we've got to be there for him too, you know, because that's what didn't happen yesterday. Dray was there to try to stop Luka and Austin Reaves when they were driving to the rim."

Warriors now have to deal with Zach Edey in home opener

Big men are going to have a field day against the Warriors if they don't figure it out soon. Santos also mentioned that they were already working on it. Somehow, the next big man on the schedule is even more imposing than Kessler. I'm not sure there's a bigger person on planet Earth right now than Zach Edey at 7'4" and 300 pounds.

"He's a really good player, he's skilled, massive," Kerr said about Edey. "Big challenge, and you know the beauty of the NBA is that there's always a game the next night, you have a chance to sort of wash the last one off with a good performance."

Edey will only be part of the problem if the Warriors want to wash this latest drubbing off with a good performance. The number three pick in this year's draft, Cam Boozer, will be a handful. Yaxel Lendeborg, after his spirited battle with Doncic, appears to be the leading candidate to take on the Boozer assignment.

Kerr also praised two-way player Graham Ike's toughness and ability to understand coverages in his 12 minutes in the fourth quarter against the Lakers. With Charles Bassey remaining questionable with knee tendinitis, Ike might receive early minutes to help cope with that bulky frontcourt.

Their most serious threat on the scouting report right now isn't Edey or Boozer, but one of Golden State's former two-way players. Ty Jerome, who appeared in 45 games for Golden State in 2022-23 and averaged seven points along with three assists per contest, put up a career-high 45 points, seven rebounds and six assists in his team's season opener against the Utah Jazz, displaying some insane shot-making ability and Curry-esque range. It was an efficient 45 points, too, as he went 17-of-25 from the field and 5-of-10 from deep. Impressive.

The Lendeborg-Doncic clash has really taken most of the attention away from what happened from a basketball standpoint at Crypto.com Arena on Wednesday night. Kerr opened his presser Thursday by saying that the film session from their season opener "wasn't pretty." Curry noted postgame at the podium that they played eight minutes of fundamentally sound basketball before things went south.

If the Warriors want to stick around long enough to have a chance in the fourth quarter to use their special weapon (Curry), the defense should be the point of emphasis going forward. Otherwise, it's going to be a very long, demoralizing season. Both for the players defending the rim and the fans.

"We got a lot to clean up," Kerr said.

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