Golden State Warriors: Goals for the season’s final 7 games

With seven games remaining in the regular season, the Golden State Warriors have a lot to play for — even if they technically have nothing to play for at all.

As March comes to a close, the Golden State Warriors are close to whole. Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green are all back in action, with just Stephen Curry missing from the All-Star quartet.

There is nothing “just” about Curry’s absence, of course. The two-time MVP is central to everything Golden State is about, and the team will be tested as early as Round 1 without him.

With that being said, there are seven games left in the regular season, and while they seem rather meaningless given that the Warriors have clinched the No. 2 seed, they provide a valuable opportunity for the team to find ways to be better without its point guard — and better still when he returns.

Keep Up The Ball Movement

Maybe it was the Milwaukee Bucks’ overly-aggressive defense, but before Durant’s ejection, the Warriors moved the ball better than they have all season without Curry.

This should be replicable. As great a player as Curry is, there is way too much passing talent on Golden State’s roster for the offense to stagnate as it has with him out. Durant, Green, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and David West are all elite passers at their positions, while Zaza Pachulia, Jordan Bell and Patrick McCaw are no scrubs either.

Steve Kerr‘s offense is predicated on movement of the ball and of bodies. He needs to figure out how to get his guys playing this way, with or without his best player. The Milwaukee game was a start.

Figure out best non-Curry lineups

Of the three Curry-less lineup combinations that have logged at least 100 possessions, the Livingston/Thompson/Iguodala/Green/West group stands out. They have a net rating of +9.5, due primarily to a defensive rating of 90.6.

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The best group that has logged over 50 possessions? That would be the same group with another guy at small forward — Nick Young. Over 90 possessions, that group is outscoring teams by 25 points (+27.7 net rating)

Durant’s absence from these units is telling. He is only eighth on the Warriors in on/off differential (+1.2), due primarily to the team’s 106.7 defensive rating when he plays and 99.5 defensive rating when he sits. Despite a career-high in blocks, his defensive effort has been inconsistent this season. His steal rate is the lowest it’s ever been, and his defensive rebound rate is at an eight-year low as well.

In a sense, this is encouraging. The offense still thrives with Durant (116.7 offensive rating), and his defensive struggles are due more to effort than anything else. It would be nice to see him start to dial it up over these last six games, if for no other reason than to give Kerr a chance to see what works.

Rediscover defensive identity

Durant is not the only Warrior who has coasted defensively this season. Green has not brought anything close to his usual intensity or play-to-play consistency, and as a result, Golden State is No. 6 in the NBA with a 103.7 defensive rating — its worst showing since 2012-13.

There’s nothing wrong with a No. 6 ranked defense. Teams have won titles with less. But without Curry, the Warriors will need to dominate on the less glamorous end of the court.

Doing so may simply be a matter of flipping the switch. Most indicators are that it is, since physical decline is not taking a visible toll on the guys it should be — the aging Livingston, West and Iguodala are still the highest-rated defenders on the team.

Even so, it would behoove the team to flip that switch now. Defense is about more than effort. It is about habits. The Warriors have built some bad ones this year, particularly from the guys they will lean on most this postseason in Durant and Green.

Now that upper body injuries have given both of them a chance to get their legs back, the time to ratchet things up is now.

See if Bell has any juice as a starting 5

Coming out of the All-Star Break, Kerr went with JaVale McGee as his starting center. The move was supposed to inject life into a team that had come out flat far too often in the season’s first half, and it worked. The Warriors won six straight, and looked re-energized.

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Then the injuries started piling up, and the team’s other four starters (you know those guys) missed a combined 29 games in March. Given McGee’s reliance on the space created by his teammates, Kerr went back to Pachulia for a stretch, before returning to McGee in Durant’s first game back from his fractured rib.

With the No. 2 seed locked up, Kerr would be wise to try a third option here. It is quite possible that Jordan Bell would have gotten the starting nod given to McGee if not for his sprained ankle in mid-January.

While the injury did set him back, the Warriors are no longer looking to win games. What would be the harm in giving the most dynamic 5-man on the team a look? Bell can finish above the rim almost as well as McGee, and pass almost as well as Pachulia. He is better defensively than either, and quicker up and down the floor.

He lacks the experience to start in the playoffs, but he has the talent to. With Curry out, talent is the greater premium right now. Kerr can, and should, use at least a game or two to figure out what he has in Bell.

Stay (relatively) healthy

This is always the goal for every team, but rarely has it been as high a priority as it is for the Warriors entering April.

There is no playoff positioning at stake. The team’s core has been beat up this season, and most of the roster has multiple Finals runs taxed on its bodies. Already down Curry for at least the start of the playoffs, seeing another star go down again could be catastrophic.

All of the other goals are real. Finding lineups that work, establishing defensive habits and revitalizing the offense will all increase the Warriors’ chances of surviving until Curry returns and thriving once he does.

Still, health matters more than all of that stuff combined. Such is the reality for a team that, when 100 percent, is nearly unbeatable.

Next: 2017-18 Week 24 NBA Power Rankings

Stats courtesy of Cleaning The Glass and NBA.com