Victor Wembanyama didn’t need a big scoring night to make his point against the Golden State Warriors on Friday. His defense did the talking.
Golden State was held to 85 points and shot just 33.3% from the floor, with Wembanyama hovering around the paint and waiting for any Warrior who tried to drive inside. The approach also put Draymond Green in a tough spot, and it highlighted just how much Green’s offense leans on Stephen Curry.
That problem gets sharper now that Curry is out for multiple weeks after suffering a torn oblique against the Houston Rockets on Wednesday night.
Green has spent years as a limited scorer, but the Warriors have usually been able to cover for that because of how well he works with Curry. The two-time MVP’s shooting gravity changes everything.
In dribble handoff actions or when Green sets the screen in a more traditional pick-and-roll, opposing centers usually have to step up. If they don’t, Curry can rise into an open three.
If they do, Curry can flip it to Green on the roll and let him operate in a 4-on-3 situation.
Without Curry, that whole setup loses its bite. Golden State no longer has the same shooting threat, and Green becomes far easier to ignore on the offensive end. Wembanyama and the Spurs treated those actions like they weren’t worth worrying about.
LJ Cryer ended up as the Warriors’ most productive scorer, which says plenty about how the night unfolded. The two-way guard hit 6 of 11 from deep and finished with a career-high 20 points, but the Spurs also knew they weren’t about to get beaten by an end-of-roster player who had logged fewer than 70 minutes this season.
Green has never been a major scoring weapon, and even with Curry he can sometimes be a net negative offensively. On Friday, though, he looked flat-out unplayable, and Golden State paid for it. The Warriors won’t run into Wembanyama every night, but this stretch without Curry could keep exposing the same issue.
That leaves Steve Kerr, the coaching staff and Green himself with a clear problem to solve: make Green useful on offense, or his defense won’t be enough to justify Golden State essentially playing 4-on-5 on the other end.
The timing matters for Green, too. This stretch lines up with his becoming trade-eligible on December 15, with the franchise legend still, in some sense, playing for his future with the Warriors.
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