On the concept of ‘kills’ and how the Warriors’ offense was killed by the Wolves’ defense

Warriors continue their struggles on offense

All season long, I have been tracking a certain defensive metric called “kills” from the Golden State Warriors. Obviously, it’s not a metric tracked by typical box-score sites such as the official stats page of the NBA, Basketball Reference, ESPN, etc. — nor is it present in any of the advanced tracking sites such as Synergy, Second Spectrum, Inpredictable, and others.

Rather, it’s a metric hand-tracked by basketball programs at the high school and college level; I wouldn’t be surprised if some NBA teams track it, as well. It’s known by different terms (e.g., “turkeys,” “locks”) depending on the program — but “kills” has a certain oomph to it that makes it provocative and describes rather well what it (figuratively) entails.

What is a “kill”? One kill is simply three defensive stops in a row — but you may ask, what exactly is a stop? A stop can be any of the following:

1. A defensive rebound off of an opponent missed field-goal attempt
2. A defensive rebound off of an opponent missing all non-and-1 free-throw attempts
3. An opponent turnover (forced and unforced)

Like most metrics, counting kills isn’t a perfect indicator of what it’s trying to track — in this case, how effective a team has been defensively — but it’s still a useful indicator to evaluate defense and how it’s being played (accompanied, of course, by film and the eye-test). In the Warriors’ case — fourth in non-garbage time defensive rating and fifth in half-court defensive rating heading into their game against the Minnesota Timberwolves — kill counts have, for the most part, painted an accurate picture of how their defense has looked.

This isn’t a fast and hard rule, but generally speaking, it is said that a team that tallies seven kills in a game has a 90% chance of winning; others state that eight kills raises that to 98%. Of course, this doesn’t take into account how effective a team can capitalize on their kills — i.e., if they’re scoring consistently off of the stops they’re garnering. If the other team is also getting consistent stops and staying close in the kill count, seven or eight kills won’t raise your chances of winning significantly if the other team is close to that number.

Of their 13 wins this season, 11 have been in games where the Warriors tallied more kills than their opponents; the other two wins were against the New Orleans Pelicans on October 30 where they lost the kill count by one (6-7) and against the Oklahoma City Thunder on November 10 where they ended up tied in the kill count (7-7). Of their nine losses this season, five have been in games where Warriors’ opponents tallied more kills than them, while four have been in games where the kill count ended up tied.

Based purely on kill counts, the Warriors have an 11-6-5 record. On the surface, having won and tied more kill contests than losing them does align with their overall and half-court defensive rating. In a vacuum, defense hasn’t been a problem — but as mentioned above, the concern with the Warriors hasn’t been the matter of getting stops; it’s been trying to score off of them. The Warriors are 11th in the league in transition offense frequency but are a subpar 23rd in points per transition play, an indication that they aren’t making the most out of their live-ball stops garnered from defensive rebounds (25th in points per play after a defensive rebound) and opponent turnovers (12th in points per play after an opponent turnover).

But the problem on offense hasn’t just been on transition opportunities — it’s been an overall concern that includes half-court offense. Heading into the game against the Wolves, the Warriors were 20th in overall offensive rating and 17th in half-court offensive rating. Those numbers are set to get even worse with this latest loss to the Wolves, in which the Warriors were limited to just 91.8 points per 100 possessions, way lower than their pregame season average of 112.1 points per 100 possessions.

In terms of kill counts, the Warriors were able to tally six kills against the Wolves — countered by an astounding 11 kills from Minnesota.

Three separate scoring droughts from the Warriors translated into three separate instances where the Wolves tallied at least three consecutive kills and a minimum of eight consecutive stops — that is, three separate instances where the Warriors failed to score a single point for at least eight possessions (one of which was 12 consecutive possessions — four straight kills by the Wolves).

The first instance:

The second instance:

The third instance:

A common theme in the Warriors’ three stretches of offensive stagnancy: the Wolves’ length across the board giving them trouble getting past the point of attack, as well as allowing the Wolves to clog passing lanes and deflect the ball. Moreover, whenever the Warriors did get through the first line of defense, they had to deal with an all-world rim protector in Rudy Gobert.

Moreover, the Steph Curry-Buddy Hield tandem, normally a potent offensive duo for the Warriors (123.9 points per 100 possessions in 147 minutes prior to the Wolves game) failed to gain any traction against the Wolves — a huge part of which may have been due to the lack of a serviceable connector and hub on the floor during their minutes tonight, with Draymond Green’s minutes not coinciding with the duo.

Another problem that is persisting, has persisted, and may persist as long as the Warriors are under Steve Kerr and his pass-heavy offense: turnovers. The Warriors turned the ball over 22 times against the Wolves, who were able to score 17 points off of those turnovers. Some of those were forced by the Wolves’ lengthy defense; others were of the quintessential unforced variety where a pass was overthrown or underthrown, in situations where they crossed the very thin line between playing appropriately fast and playing way too fast. While the Warriors have improved their turnover rate this season (14th) compared to last season (22nd), there’s still plenty of room for improvement in that department.

The overarching culprit — and one that has plagued the Warriors for what has felt like time immemorial — is the appalling transformation of their offense whenever Curry sits down or misses time.

With Curry on the floor (515 minutes):

• 120.4 offensive rating
• 58.7% eFG
• 61.0% TS

With Curry off the floor (546 minutes):

• 102.0 offensive rating
• 48.5% eFG
• 51.3% TS

With Curry having spent more time on the sidelines than on the court this season, the logical solution would then be to flip that ratio around and find a way for him to play more. However, with ailing knees that has forced Kerr to limit his minutes and forced the medical staff to manage his load, it’s proving to be a tough task keeping Curry on the floor. At 36-years old and turning 37 this March, there has been no truer indication of Father Time creeping closer.

With an offense struggling to capitalize on the stops the defense is getting — and getting stopped consistently in turn — it’s getting extremely difficult to maintain what would be considered an elite defense. The equation is simple: not being able to put the ball in the hoop forces a team to have to scramble back, which minimizes their ability to get set in the half court, which makes it easier for the opponent to score. While defense does win championships, NBA basketball still and will always require a passable offense for a team to be considered contenders. As of the moment, the Warriors are far from being a passable offense and, in turn, are miles away from the inner circle of championship contenders.