Warriors’ no-show against Grizzlies is a microcosm of their offense no-showing over the last 15 games

Changes in schemes, personnel, and execution have coincided with their freefall.

After a defensive battle with the Houston Rockets — in which the Golden State Warriors allowed a mere 100 points per 100 possessions but managed to score a paltry 96.8 points per 100 possessions — and a shootout with the Dallas Mavericks in which scoring 131.7 points per 100 possessions was nullified by the Mavs scoring 143 points per 100 possessions, the Warriors put out a massive stinker of a game against the Memphis Grizzlies in which they managed to score even fewer points per 100 possessions (89.4) than they did against the Rockets, while giving up almost as much per 100 possessions (138.5) as they did against the Mavs.

There have been nights where the defense has excelled independent of their offense. But as their night against the Grizzlies blatantly displayed, it’s getting very difficult to maintain their defense (ranked sixth prior to the Grizzlies game) if they continue to have up-and-down performances offensively. “Up and down” itself is both a generous assessment of how they’ve been performing on that end of the floor and a literal assessment of how they’ve had to play with fewer opportunities to set their half-court defense due to missed shots and turnovers. There have been plenty of theories and hypotheses flaunted around as to why they’ve been so offensively inept, and it clearly isn’t just a consequence of missing one or two players. But an interesting pattern, both involving the eye test and the numbers, has emerged.

De’Anthony Melton played only six games with the Warriors this season, a stretch that had him miss five games after his first three games, followed by missing the rest of the year after the three games of him returning to active duty. As such, Melton shouldn’t have had a significant impact on this team’s offensive competency, and that largely still rings true about a team that lives and dies with Steph Curry. But in the first 11 game where Melton was still on the team and still wasn’t considered out for the season, the Warriors were scoring 117.9 points per 100 possessions — sixth over that period, per Cleaning the Glass, which eliminates garbage-time possessions from their tracking. In the 15 games since, that number has drastically dropped to 108.8 points per 100 possessions, 26th over that period.

Melton’s injury is by no means the main cause of this massive drop in offensive efficiency. Rather, it can be treated as an inflection point of sorts for something that’s caught my eye in terms of the Warriors’ offensive scheme. Prior to this season, the inclusion of Terry Stotts to Steve Kerr’s coaching staff was expected to be an infusion of freshness to an established offense that needed a bit of shaking up. Stotts’ philosophy — heavily inspired by the Blocker-Mover offense — was incorporated into the Warriors’ playbook as early as preseason.

Melton was a key component of Stotts’ Blocker-Mover based sets — “One Chest” and the “Thumb” series, in particular — because of his ability to both be a shooter off of the various pindowns and flares the sets involved and his ability to handle and make decisions with the ball in his hands. Not to mention his defensive pedigree and ability to take opposing primary scorers, as evidently displayed by his crucial clutch period defense on Kyrie Irving in the Warriors’ NBA Cup win over the Mavericks earlier this season.

However, for reasons that most likely go beyond Melton disappearing from the lineup and the roster altogether, Kerr and his staff decided to phase out the Blocker-Mover based sets in favor of the more traditional Kerr-ball offense — less patterned sets, more free-flowing freelance, and more dependent on reads and on-the-fly decision making. The real reason behind this change is known only to its direct stakeholders and, as such, remains an internal secret. But it is an interesting one that has coincided with the team’s offensive freefall.

Stotts’ philosophy, whenever used, hasn’t clashed with Kerr’s — in fact, it has served to amplify it. One clear example was the fact that both “One Chest” and the “Thumb” series allowed the Warriors to flow into more of their traditional split-action sets.

But more often recently, split actions have been initiated without much window dressing. Off-ball movement has been denied with switching and plenty of top-locking with help provided behind it to take away backdoor cuts. Half-court possessions devolving into late shot-clock attempts or outright shot-clock violations have become a common sight.

Much has been said of the need for Curry to have scoring support, and the Warriors organization responded with the trade for Dennis Schröder. On the surface, Schröder seems rather antithetical to the Warriors’ movement-based offense built on pace and flow; Schröder prefers to play a deliberate half-court game based on the pick-and-roll, which requires him to have the ball in his hands for a prolonged period of time. Both Kerr and Draymond Green stated the need for the team to adjust to Schröder instead of Schröder adjusting to the Warriors’ scheme, with Kerr intending to run more pick-and-roll sets for him.

A glimpse of that was seen against the Grizzlies. With Curry’s first stint coming to an end, Schröder became the primary ball handler on the floor. The first play with him in that role: “55,” the Warriors’ play call for double drag screens. While Schröder missed a good mid-range look, it provided a peek into Kerr and the coaching staff’s line of thinking when it comes to accommodating the 31-year-old German guard:

However, the pitfalls of Schröder’s game were a cause for concern. Besides his profile as an antithetical ball-pounding guard who lives and breathes in the half court, Schröder’s ability to drive and get to the paint (14.7 drives per game prior to the Grizzlies game, making him the most prolific driver on the team) comes with a major caveat: his finishing.

On a team that is shooting 63.3% from within four feet of the rim — 23rd in the NBA — Schröder’s hit-or-miss finishing compounds a problem that has plagued the Warriors all season long:

Of course, this is Schröder’s first game in a new environment, so time for adjustments must be allotted. But that process needs to be expedited if the Warriors are to salvage this season. Only so much offensive ineptitude can be masked by defense — and as displayed by their last two games, in which they gave up a total of 287 points, their defense has a clear breaking point if it continues to be unsupported by the need to put the ball in the hoop. Whether that’s returning to “old” new stuff, executing their existing stuff much better, or waiting for Schröder to acclimate to the role they need him to play as Curry’s scoring/ball-handling support — or even further trades for better scorers and advantage creators — the Warriors need to do something and do it fast, before the season spirals into another collective no-show.