One interesting stat for each Warrior

Nov 29, 2022 - 3:15 AM

We’re deep enough into the NBA season that trends are starting to emerge. So I decided to comb through individual stats for every Golden State Warriors player, with a mission: find one unique stat for each player.

Some of the stats are positive. Some of them are negative. Some aren’t really either. And some aren’t particularly meaningful because the players have played so few minutes.

But all of them are — to me, at least — interesting.

Patrick Baldwin Jr. — 0 fouls

This stat comes with a serious caveat: Baldwin has only played 24 minutes. Still, rookies are notorious for making mistakes both big and small, and it’s rather remarkable that in the first 24 minutes of Baldwin’s career, he’s avoided fouling anyone, and only committed a single turnover.

If you don’t think that’s impressive, skip ahead to the Ryan Rollins section.

Steph Curry — 10.9% rebound rate

In his 14th NBA season, you can make the claim that Curry is playing better than ever in many areas. One area where it’s very easy to make that case is on the glass.

The Chef is gobbling up boards like never before. Discounting his five-game season in 2019-20, Curry has never had a rebounding rate higher than 9% in his career, but he’s all the way up to 10.9% this year. Interestingly, he’s doing it entirely on the defensive end. His offensive rebounding rate is actually significantly below his career average, but his defensive rebounding rate is unlike anything he’s ever done before: he’s grabbing 19.4% of available defensive rebounds, after entering the season with a career rate of 12.3%.

Donte DiVincenzo — 46.4% two-point shooting

I have a lot of faith in DiVincenzo’s ability to excel in the Warriors offensive system, and his performance in Sunday’s win was a big step in the right direction.

But something odd has happened to him lately: he’s lost the ability to score from inside the arc. DiVincenzo is making just 46.7% of his two-pointers, which should be easy to dismiss as small sample silliness, since he’s taken just 15 such shots this year. Except he only shot 37.3% on twos last year, and 47.5% the year before. Compare that to 68.3% as a rookie and 56.7% as a sophomore — despite shooting twos more regularly — and it’s a bit of a troubling trend.

DiVincenzo is a superb athlete, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be putting that athleticism on display cutting to the rim for easy looks like Gary Payton II did. No one expects him to shoot 75.4% from inside the arc like GP2 did last year, but somewhere between his current mark and that mark is what the Dubs should expect of him.

Draymond Green — 36.4% three-point shooting

Don’t look now, but Green is having the second-best three-point shooting season of his career. Admittedly it’s on low volume — his 1.2 attempts per game are tied with last season for the lowest mark since his rookie year — but it’s still encouraging. We need a lot more than 22 attempts before we start calling him a shooter, but Green having a better three-point percentage at the end of November than Devin Booker was not on my bingo card.

JaMychal Green — 22.9% on jump shots

Just like Draymond, the other Green isn’t on the Warriors to hit jumpers. But he sure looks like a better player when he does.

So far this season he hasn’t. He’s been a beast near the basket, shooting 25-for-38 at the rim, and 12-for-17 between three and 10 feet. But he’s 2-for-5 on twos of 10 or more feet, and he’s just 6-for-30 on threes. The Warriors certainly hope those numbers correct themselves.

Ty Jerome — 4 turnovers

Jerome is not being asked to be the primary ballhandler that he was in college, and has been at previous stops. He’s been used exclusively as emergency depth when one of Curry or DiVincenzo is out, and when thrown on the floor he’s asked to play off ball in the motion offense.

Still, he ends up with the ball in his hands a lot, and is on the roster almost entirely because of his passing ability. And in 147 minutes of action he’s only turned the ball over four times. Even if you’re not a primary ballhandler, that’s an absurdly low turnover rate, especially considering how turnover-prone his teammates have been.

Jonathan Kuminga — 85.0% free throw percentage, 23.8% free throw rate

Kuminga gets two stats ... lucky him! The stats go hand in hand, but one’s good and one’s bad.

A year after shooting just 68.4% from the charity stripe, Kuminga is all the way up to 85.0% (although that’s admittedly on just 20 attempts). For a player as wildly athletic as he is, being able to shoot a high percentage on free throws can be the difference between being a serviceable offensive player and a dynamic weapon.

But the bad news is he’s not getting to the free throw line. As a rookie, Kuminga had a free throw rate that was a whopping 41.3% ... that number has plummeted to 23.8% this year. Not surprisingly, his three point rate has done the opposite, and his scoring efficiency has taken a huge hit.

Anthony Lamb — 0 free throw attempts

If you follow me on the drowning hellscape that is Twitter, then you’re familiar with a running bit I have. Every Monday I list the league leaders in minutes played without accumulating a certain stat (Bojan Bogdanović, for instance, leads the league this year with 0 blocks in 674 minutes).

The league leader in minutes played without a free throw attempted is former Warrior Justin Holiday, who has played 283 minutes without finding his way to the charity stripe. Only one player in the league is close to Holiday: Lamb, who is 239 minutes into the season without a free throw.

Kevon Looney — 6.5:1 assist to turnover ratio

I’ve been heaping praise on Looney’s passing all year long, and the numbers back it up. He has the best assist rate of his career by a mile, and the best turnover rate of his career by a mile.

Add that up and Looney has been good for 65 assists this season, a remarkable number for a center who still doesn’t play full starter minutes. And he’s committed a mere 10 turnovers, a ridiculously low number for a starter — currently Reggie Bullock is the only player in the NBA who has played more minutes than Looney with as few turnovers, and he only has 20 assists.

Looney’s numbers are downright silly for a center. For comparison, here’s how he stacks up against some other centers who play similar roles (lots of dirty work, not asked to score much).

Kevon Looney: 65 assists, 10 turnovers
Steven Adams: 41 assists, 44 turnovers
Ivica Zubac: 30 assists, 48 turnovers
Nic Claxton: 26 assists, 30 turnovers

Moses Moody — 6 more turnovers than last year

Moody still plays a game that’s largely devoid of bad mistakes, which makes it that much more confusing that he’s in Steve Kerr’s doghouse. But despite that, his turnover rate has skyrocketed from the microscopic rate he posted as a rookie.

Last year Moody turned the ball over just 13 times in 607 minutes. This year he’s at 19 turnovers already, in just 267 minutes. It hasn’t been the result of increased aggression, as per 100 possessions he’s averaging the same number of assists, just one more free throw attempt, and 2.3 fewer shot attempts.

Jordan Poole — 26.4% free throw rate

It hasn’t been the season that anyone envisioned after Poole signed a massive four-year extension before the start of the year.

But there are a lot of good signs if you look for them, including the fact that JP is getting to the free thrown line at a higher clip than ever before. After posting 25.1% free throw rates in each of the last two seasons, Poole is up to 26.4%. It’s not a leap, but it is a sign that he’s doing smart things with the basketball, even if the shot isn’t falling. Poole has been inefficient this year, but it’s almost entirely due to his three-point shot not falling, and that’s likely to correct itself with time.

Ryan Rollins — 3.6 minutes per turnover

Remember when I mentioned how wild it is that Baldwin only has one turnover and no fouls in his 24 minutes of action, because rookies make simple mistakes? Enter Rollins, who is turning the ball over once every 3.6 minutes of action. And just for good measure, he’s committing a foul once every 4.8 minutes.

To put that into totals, he has nine fouls and 12 turnovers in 43 minutes this year.

It’s at this point in the article where I remind you that some of these stats — such as the ones involving players who have yet to play a full game’s worth of minutes in their career — shouldn’t be read into too much!

Klay Thompson — 25.5% usage rate

Much has been made of Klay’s early season struggles, which, thankfully, seem to be in the rearview mirror. Thompson’s slow start to the season was categorized as ball-hogging, but that’s a bit of a mislabeling. His shot selection was poor, not because he was taking too many shots, but because he simply wasn’t taking as good of quality ones as we’re used to.

His usage rate of 25.5% is the second-lowest that it’s been since the start of the dynasty. Some of that is due to the progress he’s made the last few games, but even at the peak of his low efficiency games, his usage rate wasn’t too high.

Andrew Wiggins — 2.36 seconds per touch

If you’ve been reading this site for long, then you know that I was lower on Wiggins than most people were when they traded for him (I still loved the trade, though, due to being even lower on D’Angelo Russell).

Part of why I was low on Wiggins was due to the way he stagnates the offense. I don’t think Wiggins has ever been a ball-hog or a selfish player, but his offensive style in Minnesota was to catch the ball, hold it, assess his options, and then move forward. That allows the defense to reset, and is fairly antithetical to Kerr’s read-and-react offense.

Wiggins has taken leaps and bounds since joining the Warriors, and I’m very happy to have been wrong about him. And, in my eyes, the area where I was most critical of him is where he’s grown the most. In the year where the Warriors traded for Wiggins, he averaged 3.70 seconds per touch. In other words, when the ball found Wiggins’ hands, it stayed there for an average of 3.70 seconds before he shot or passed.

His first full year with the Dubs saw that number drop to 2.99. Last year it was 2.96.

And this year it’s all the way down to 2.36. Wiggins is buying into the offensive system more, and the result is not just his most efficient offensive season ever (by a long shot), but that he’s helping the offense far more than ever before.

James Wiseman — 6.4 fouls per 36 minutes

It’s no secret that Wiseman has struggled with fouling this season. Some of it is due to the fact that he’s not a good defender at this stage in his career. Some of it is due to getting bad whistles as a young player. Some of it is due to being scared of those bad whistles and playing tentatively which, counterintuitively, usually leads to more fouls. And some of it is due to the fact that the Warriors don’t yet trust Wiseman in their switch-heavy defense, and instead put him in drop coverage, where he’s the final line of defense against slashers and drivers coming full speed to the hoop.

Still, it’s kind of staggering to see it in statistical form. If Wiseman played starter minutes, he’d foul out most games.

And there are your bizarre, unique, and perhaps useless stats, Dub Nation. Enjoy. Or don’t.