- 3 months ago
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00:00Austin in San Jose called in, and he asked,
00:04and I think that this is clearly directed at me, which is fine,
00:08but he asked after a Kaminga performance like we saw last night,
00:12are you now going to put some of the blame on Steve Kerr?
00:17And I'm going to shock everybody by saying, no.
00:23No, not Kerr.
00:25I don't see this as a blame situation.
00:28Why would we do that?
00:30So that's the first way I'm going to answer it.
00:32Why does it, when something evolves forward,
00:36is that an immediate reaction to go, now let's look at where it went wrong before?
00:42I think that's revisionist history.
00:44Like to say, in other words, the implication is, if you're blaming Steve Kerr,
00:49the implication is that the performance that Jonathan gave last night
00:54has been there for the taking all along.
00:57If you think that, come on, you don't think that, do you?
01:04Do you?
01:05I don't think Jonathan thinks that.
01:08That's not what he said.
01:09That's not why he's grinding with Jimmy Butler, looking at tape, trying to be, as he called it, a sponge.
01:18I mean, like, to me, last night, especially in the second half, because I did not love the shot selection in the first half.
01:24I liked the effort, the shot selection still, to me, often felt off.
01:29The second half, phenomenal basketball.
01:33Just tremendous basketball.
01:34And if the Warriors have that from the whole group, they're going to win lots of basketball games this year.
01:41But I don't find this to be a blame situation.
01:46But secondarily, and I get it, we understand the dynamic, I don't think that this is about Jonathan.
01:52This is all basketball players.
01:55Teams have a system, and the players need to go run the system.
02:00And so if any player starts to run the system and starts to make really good decisions and starts to do all the things that a team asks him to do, then that's great.
02:12And all of a sudden, the performance is going to get better.
02:16If he is such a young basketball player that's so inexperienced, and he is, even though he's been in the league for five years,
02:23if we're going to talk about that inexperience, then we have to be open for his own personal growth and education as an NBA basketball player.
02:34I don't think that something can happen today, and that automatically means it was all there all along.
02:41That doesn't make sense to me through my eyes, at least.
02:44For me, you look at last year, which was last year.
02:47And if you want to go pre-injury, pre-Jimmy Butler, you can look at how he played.
02:51And he played differently than he did last night.
02:55Last night, he played well within the construct of what they want him to do.
02:59And I disagree with the idea of his shot selection in the first half.
03:02He took six shots, and there was one where he got in the key early in the shot clock,
03:08and he did a spin, half spin from 12 feet, and he was guarded, and there was a second defender there.
03:13And that's one you probably would want him to be patient on, because that shot's there 12 seconds later in the shot clock.
03:19That's the only one.
03:20He had a couple of threes that he took that were open.
03:23He had a deep three that I was like, in the moment, I was thinking, oh, no, oh, yes.
03:28And he drilled it.
03:29And the other miss he had was on a follow slam where I can't believe he missed that dunk.
03:34He went up high for the rebound, and he just missed the dunk.
03:37That's a physical thing, though.
03:38That's fine.
03:38What happened to him in the first half was at least two times where he got into the painted
03:43area, into the key, and instead of doing the things that we've all been wanting him to
03:49not do, he was under control.
03:51He stopped, and he pitched it back.
03:53He pitched it back to Pods, who pump fake, and hit a three.
03:56He pitched one back to Steph, who hit a three.
03:58That, to me, was the area offensively where I saw immediate growth of, yeah, you go headlong
04:05into an area, and you're not able to get to the rim.
04:09And so he was able to collect and realize that there was a pitch out, and he did that.
04:13Steve referenced multiple decisions in the first half that he did not like from Jonathan
04:19Kaminga.
04:19So, like, I don't think I'm, like, flying off the handle here to say...
04:24Yeah, we'll ask him at five.
04:25Yeah, I mean, last night, Steve Kerr.
04:27I think he's really, really matured.
04:31You know, he's had a great camp.
04:32We've had some really good conversations.
04:35I think he has a better understanding of, you know, what we need.
04:39He saw in the first half, he took a couple tough mid-range fadeaways that we don't want.
04:44He immediately held up his hand.
04:45He realized, you know, that was not the shot.
04:47He had, you know, a couple turnovers where he drove into traffic, and second half starts.
04:54And, you know, the whole talk at halftime was, let's use Steph Curry.
04:57Let's use his movement and put pressure on the defense, because we didn't do that in the
05:02first half.
05:03And Jonathan, the first few plays of the third quarter, it was beautifully screened for Steph,
05:10slipped to the rim.
05:11Draymond got him a bucket.
05:13We ran our split cut stuff.
05:15They both went with Steph.
05:16He hit the wide-open three.
05:18I think he just has a better sense of what's needed now compared to past years.
05:24So that's great.
05:26Like, to me, that's what I saw, too.
05:28It wasn't only shot selection.
05:30It was certain decisions.
05:31And he referenced dribbling into traffic and turning it over.
05:34Like, to me...
05:35Which, actually, it didn't happen.
05:37I don't know if he's thinking about, like, plays where maybe somebody else was charged
05:40with the turnover.
05:41Yeah, you're talking about being credited with the turnover.
05:43Sure.
05:44He's talking about plays where decisions were made that led to a poor possession.
05:49Again, like, what's wonderful about this is that that didn't lead to, oh, you're getting
05:55yanked out of the game.
05:57And then Jonathan is either sort of, like, upset or confused about what happened or he's
06:03bucking.
06:03The best part of that commentary to me is that Jonathan immediately raised his hand and showed
06:09the coach, like, no, I know.
06:11I know.
06:11My bad.
06:12Then we're good here.
06:13Everybody's going to turn the ball over.
06:16Everybody's going to have bad decisions.
06:18Everyone's going to have bad shots.
06:20If Jonathan is clear on what those are, what the good ones are, and what the bad ones are,
06:26then that's great.
06:28That's great.
06:29And all you can ask for is what happened.
06:32That he came out in the second half and played one of my favorite halves I've ever seen him play.
06:36He was fantastic in the second half, literally from the word go.
06:41And they went on a run coming out of the locker room that put the game away almost immediately.
06:47That's what you want.
06:48And I'm going to ask Steve today about kind of a Kyle Shanahan thing.
06:53Like, do you come out and did you script the first couple?
06:56Because if you look at the opening sequence of the second half, the first play is a Kaminga
07:01screen and he just fades out to the three-point line.
07:04He gets the ball and he hits the three.
07:06And then either the next trip or the second trip down, he goes to set the same screen and
07:12he slips it, which means he doesn't actually set the screen.
07:15It's like a pretend.
07:16It's almost like play action where you go to set the screen and then boop, you cut to
07:20the hoop.
07:20And it was clearly designed because Draymond, he's dribbling and he's waiting for it.
07:25And JK slips it and it's a bounce pass.
07:27And then JK finishes at the hoop.
07:29And I'm going to ask Steve if, you know, that was a design.
07:32Did you come out of the locker room and, you know, Shanahan, I don't know if you saw,
07:36I know that you probably saw every little bit of everything you watch every game a couple
07:40of times, but when he came out of the locker room, he had the laminated play sheet, but
07:45he also had a piece of like binder paper on which it looked like was written the first
07:50six or eight plays of the second half.
07:52So when you go into the locker room in the NFL, you do a little bit of a re-script, especially
07:57when you're going to get the ball.
07:58And so I wonder if Steve Kerr similarly comes out of the second half and has like, you
08:04know what, let's run these couple, not that we need to like spoon feed JK, you don't, but
08:09maybe those plays were like by design for JK.
08:12Let's go back out to the phones.
08:14B in San Jose is next up.
08:18Hi B, thanks for the call.
08:19What's up?
08:22Willard and Dibbs, just like Stiney and Guru, you're both doing a great job.
08:26So, B, so are you.
08:31I'm doing my best, man.
08:32But I want to think about, you know, the things that actually Dibbs is bringing up right now
08:38about the maturation and just the overall patience that it seems like Kaminga is using
08:44now, at least just in his first game that we saw, to approach his impact on the court.
08:49And really, I don't think he needs to dominate the ball like fans and sometimes other folks
08:55in the basketball analyst world seem to think he needs to do in order to be an impactful
09:00player.
09:00He just really needs to dominate the activity of what's going on in the play.
09:05And I would highlight both the lobby through to Butler in the first half where he was patient
09:12to see Jimmy cutting.
09:13And then, to borrow, you know, Dibbs, I know Guru, that's your boy, and you like to, you
09:19know, rib him a little bit with the ha-ha and the skeet-skeet.
09:22But it was right on that play that was under a minute to go in the first half where Kaminga
09:27had the ball, he was getting inside the three-point line, and he could have went with the ha-ha
09:31and the skeet-skeet.
09:33But instead, he more so went with the hey-hey and stay on your feet.
09:37Because he shimmied on his defender, got his defender to bite a little bit, as well
09:42as the defender that was guarding pods.
09:44That defender got drawn in, he kicked at the pods, and pods patiently let that defender
09:49fly by and canned a three-pointer.
09:52And usually it's been, I remember, you know, just different times in previous years with
09:55Kaminga, especially in those plays where it's like under a minute, and I think he maybe
09:59feels the pressure, he gets the ball, like, gotta create, gotta get this bucket before
10:02the half runs out, or gotta get the two-for-one, right?
10:05So he sort of kind of forces the action, or tries to really, like I said, dominate the
10:10ball and dominate the play.
10:11But that felt like more so, he was in control and dominated the activity, which led to good
10:16results.
10:17Yeah, B, I think, thank you, I think activity is a great word.
10:21That's, because that's what I did see for four quarters, was like that effort, and at
10:27least you're trying, you could tell he's trying to do what the team asked him to do, at least
10:33on the defensive end, rebounding the basketball, the activity level was out there.
10:40I mean, all in all, the whole thing adds up to a really great first night for the Warriors.
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