The Golden State Warriors are back. After a discouraging start to the season, they've now rattled off three straight wins against competitive opponents—most recently overcoming a massive first-half deficit to mount a 17-point win against a Los Angeles Lakers team that dominated them just last week.
Stephen Curry has been magnificent, as has Yaxel Lendeborg. More importantly, though, the Warriors' gamble on a small-ball lineup is starting to pay dividends—and that's about as encouraging a sign as you could expect in this early portion of the season.
But this is a still a team with clear needs and problems to address. As long as Kristaps Porzingis remains away from the organization—which is an indefinite thing at this point—they're going to miss the versatility and rotational flexibility that having a true, consistent center on the roster provides them with. Draymond Green is a temporary answer as a starter, and Steve Kerr has shown a willingness to use Al Horford, Charles Bassey, and even Graham Ike when the circumstances are right.
Knowing Kerr, he's not going to give extensive minutes to a player he doesn't trust. Even excluding the first two games that Bassey missed with injury, it's why his minutes have been limited—the most he's seen was a 12-minute workload in the game against the Phoenix Suns.
But the reason Bassey is on this team is to provide insurance if (and when) there are extensive minutes needed for a rebounding, highly-active big man. It's hard to blame Kerr for limiting his opportunities so far, but the time will soon come when Bassey's viability in this rotation needs to be truly tested.
Charles Bassey doesn't need to be in the rotation—but the Warriors need to see what he truly looks like within the context of this team
For the most part, we know what Bassey provides. He's not going to shut down the rim or the paint as a defender, and he's not going to operate even as a complementary playmaker with the starting lineup or the bench unit. He provides high-energy minutes, and he's capable of consistently competing with opposing big men for rebounds and making life tougher in that regard.
The optimal outcome here for the Warriors, as they work out what to do with Porzingis' contract, is finding a capable rotational center who can share minutes with Al Horford and provide them with the flexibility they need in the frontcourt on a night-to-night basis. That doesn't require the acquisition of a star, but Bassey doesn't currently provide that for this team.
That being said, that sort of move shouldn't be seen as a given at this point in the season. Teams are often hesitant to move off of their center depth unless they're definitively in a rebuilding phase. For now, what the Warriors have is Bassey, and seeing what he looks like in different situations should be one of the aims of this early part of the season.
Bassey saw some limited run in the second, third, and fourth quarters yesterday for Golden State, almost all of which came with the bench unit. There's a certain amount of spacing the Warriors sacrifice when they make that move, but Bassey was overall impressive, posting a major block on Walker Kessler and putting up six points, four rebounds, and one assist in just over eight minutes on the court. When Kerr needed a jolt of energy, he was willing to deploy Bassey in that context.
But it's easy to forget that Bassey has only now played a nine regular-season games with Golden State. What does he look like, now that he's become more acclimated to the demands of the offense, when he sees minutes with Stephen Curry and Draymond Green? Is there a viable pairing for him and Al Horford? In short, when and how can Bassey's skill set be maximized for the benefit of this Warriors rotation?
Those aren't questions that we have full answers to yet—and that's exactly the point. Whenever the opportunity presents itself over the coming weeks, especially on the back half of back-to-backs, Kerr needs to be willing to experiment with Bassey's place in this rotation, even if it's just to prove that the need for an additional center is more glaring than it currently seems.
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