The Warriors will play the Kings in their first-ever playoff matchup between division rivals. Both sides are laden with stars: Sacramento boasts one of the better offensive duos in the league in De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis, with a plethora of ideal role players to surround them. The Golden State championship core remains healthy, and it seems Andrew Wiggins will return to the lineup in some capacity after a lengthy absence.

Beyond Wiggins, who is a major question mark in terms of conditioning and overall sharpness, we know what we are getting from these players, especially on the offensive end. Fox and Sabonis will dominate on handoffs and high split actions, and Steph and Klay will run Sacramento ragged around the perimeter with Draymond initiating to punish the Kings’ lackluster half-court defense. It’s the less predictable players that will define this exciting matchup.

But one player has the potential to swing the series in either direction.

Point-of-Attack Pressure: A Series-Defining Question

Per Cleaning the Glass, the Kings are a middling team in terms of allowing shots at the rim, ranking 15th overall. They also allow a large amount of midrange shots, mostly by design. Sabonis usually sticks in drop (where midrange attempts are always available) or plays high on the screen to blitz, but Sacramento has excellent perimeter rotators in Harrison Barnes and Keegan Murray. Even if you beat the blitz at the screen level, they are more than capable of rotating and contesting well at the rim. Thus you have a team conceding the 10th-highest midrange frequency in the league.

That increased midrange frequency acts as a disguise for their lack of true rim protection. Being below-average at midrange frequency/accuracy as a defense is far more volatile than allowing lots of rim looks. Allowing a more volatile shot at a higher rate can give your defense an extra boost on nights when the middies aren’t falling. If a team beats them from there, so be it, but they’re going to sell out to stop the Warriors from getting two feet in the paint.

This is where Jordan Poole plays a critical role.

An Elite, But Volatile, Paint Toucher

Jordan Poole’s downhill game has always been a question of potential vs. production. Despite possessing an elite first step and developing handle, he was a below-average rim attempt guard this past season. The reasons for this are twofold: he’s often pull-up happy when he could drive and tends to reject screens in favor of isolation. Likely to be facing a lot of POA world-beater Davion Mitchell in bench lineups, going 1v1 is not the move. The pull-up threes are fine in the aggregate, but he needs to push the gas a bit harder to exploit Sacramento’s true defensive weaknesses.

He is certainly capable of beating elite perimeter defenders off the dribble to get paint touches. Dejounte Murray is no slouch, but a quick spin cycle puts him on the back hip below and collapses the defense:

But with Golden State’s elite screening, JP will have to make use of those to create extra advantages against an elite defender like Davion. And those chances will be there in the normal flow of their offense, especially in low post split actions with Sabonis defending.

Take this possession as an example. The Ty Jerome screen forces Saddiq Bey over, putting him in a trail position, and Poole uses that to full advantage with the baseline drive. Golden State’s elite cutting wings and bigs know when to find their opportunities, but it requires a player to draw in the defense first. And it can’t just be all Steph Curry.

Not only will Poole need to contend with a lot of Davion, but the Kings will also blend a lot of looks against him. Sabonis will be in drop, blitz the ballhandler, or even stunt at the level sometimes. It’s a similar case to a game against Minnesota a few weeks ago. Though Rudy Gobert is one of the best defensive bigs in recent memory, he is coverage limited in similar ways to Domas. That didn’t seem to matter to Jordan against a far superior defensive squad:

If in a strict drop, he can get leverage for a midrange shot. At the level, he can scurry downhill before the defense has a chance to rotate. If Sacramento tries to switch (or is forced into one), he will obliterate bigs 1v1. He’s also more than capable of hitting the short midrange shots that Sacramento is schematically willing to concede over layups and dunks.

What this comes back to is decision-making, not ability. Will he blend playmaking for others enough with getting his own shots? Can he press the advantage on switches instead of settling for off-the-dribble jumpers? Is he going to be content with midrange shots, or will he get into the bodies of the rotators and attempt to get contact?

Pressing the Variability Button

Though both teams love to shoot threes, with variance aplenty, these teams are largely predictable. Fox will collapse the paint. Sabonis will dominate with the ball in his hands while in the post. Steph and Klay will rain threes while Draymond captains the defense and keeps the offense flowing. Sacramento’s strong wing group of Kevin Huerter, Harrison Barnes, and Keegan Murray will make good defensive choices while cutting and shooting the lights out.

If Jordan Poole can slow himself enough to read the defense, make quick decisions, and collapse the paint, he could swing the entire series in Golden State’s favor. He’s more than capable of deciding the bench minutes by his play alone. If he chucks from deep, rejects screens, and looks off his teammates, the beam may be lit more often than not.

Will he be the player Golden State is paying him to be?

The post The Playoffs Rest on Jordan Poole appeared first on Swish Theory.

What is going on in his life is clearly serious enough to take precedence over ball in hoop, a concept many fans are unable to reconcile. But the reality is the Warriors still have a basketball team to maintain and need to start asking what happens if Wiggins remains with his family for the duration of the playoffs.

The answer to the question is Jonathan Kuminga.

Stepping Up Offensively

Since Wiggins’ exit from the lineup, Kuminga has taken his consistency on the offensive end to new heights. In the 15 games since (interrupted by a brief ankle twist), he’s scoring 14 points per game despite playing only 25 minutes per. Shooting 58% on twos is very promising, but shooting 42% on threes over that stretch is eye-opening. It’s the best floor-spacing he’s provided thus far in his career, and couldn’t come at a better time.

What has stood out to me the most is the mix of confidence and positive results in isolation. He’s been crushing from the midrange recently, showing a soft touch on his shots we rarely saw during his rookie season:

His development as a pinch offensive creator goes a long way toward filling the Wiggins role. Two-Way Wiggs doesn’t often find himself controlling things offensively, but with so much creation burden on Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Jordan Poole, they need a guy to spell them for a possession now and then. And unlike Wiggs, Kuminga is capable of creating more than just a long two by himself.

What’s more, this rise in efficiency and creation has not come at the expense of the other facets of his offensive game. He’s still one of the more efficient cutters on the team. Kuminga’s cut frequency places him in the 71st percentile amongst all wings, and his 1.39 PPP mark on cuts rates in the 69th percentile. Very nice.

On top of proficient cutting, his efficacy has a screener really jumps off the page. He’s developing into one of their better slip threats, finding ways to help spring Golden State’s shooters off his screens while learning to read the floor and pick his chances to roll and attack the rim.

As if it couldn’t get better, he’s beginning to learn soft lefty finishes to make himself an even more difficult contain. Though only in the fledgling stages, the Warriors have learned how to make Wiggins a paint threat with only one finishing hand. Surely they could do a lot offensively with a combo forward capable of finishing with his off hand.

The cutting, screening, and presence on the offensive glass make Kuminga a surprisingly good replacement for Wiggs on the glamorous end of the floor, but the shooting concerns lurk. Steve Kerr has said himself the reason we haven’t seen a 1:1 replacement is the shooting concern of a Kuminga/Draymond/Looney frontcourt. And though Kuminga has been streaky at times, he’s been above 40% for the past three months. Perhaps he can keep it up and make teams pay for leaving him open off Steph and Klay, hitting enough threes and attacking closeouts to pull his weight on that end of the floor.

Am I arguing that Kuminga is the third Splash Triplet going forward? Absolutely not. But has he shown he could hit above 40% of his open three looks for a seven-game series? Absolutely yes. The playoffs are often about capturing variability from your role guys, and he is capable of the positive kind of statistical outlier.

It’s unreasonable to expect him to match the consistency that Wiggins brought on that end of the floor, but he could certainly imitate it at times while bringing his own unique screen-and-slip dynamism to the lineup.

A Capable Defensive Replacement

Not many teams can boast a quality stand-in for an absent defensive stud. On most squads, your A1 perimeter defender disappearing into thin air spells doom. Not when you have a future defensive ace waiting in the wings.

Kuminga’s +0.9 defensive estimated plus-minus places him third amongst all Warriors, and you can probably guess the top two. By that metric, he’s among the top 20% of wing defenders in the league this season, and the film absolutely matches the stats.

He’s starting to pair his 100th percentile athletic tools with floor awareness and patience. Instead of trying to do everything everywhere all at once, Kuminga is learning to steer his matchups into help and exist within the system, finding himself out of position less and less. He’s still foul-prone (14th percentile foul rate) but more than capable of serious event creation with his athletic package and improved positioning (75th percentile block rate, 58th percentile steal rate amongst forwards).

Though he’s not the impact defensive rebounder that Andrew Wiggins can be, he’s more than capable of generating stops at a high rate. As the positive showings outweigh the negative by an increasing number as time goes on, there’s reason to believe Kuminga can be a capable replacement as the A1 perimeter guy, especially when surrounded by savvy vets who can provide him with the right guidance off the floor and the right help rotations and direction on it.

Filling In the Gaps

I’m not arguing that a dropoff from Wiggins to Kuminga is nonexistent. If Andy remains out throughout the playoffs, Golden State will suffer as a result, there’s no denying that. Yet every playoff team deals with absences, and the West is full of absurd on-ball creators that cannot be matched up with Klay Thompson, Steph Curry, or Donte Divincenzo. Fortunately, they have a guy who has shown he can not only take on these matchups, but win them outright on some nights.

They need an uber-athletic forward to take the hard defensive assignments, leak out in transition, and make enough shots on the other end to keep the defense honest and take pressure off the primary creators.

I think Kuminga is ready to be that guy. There’s only one way to find out if I’m right.

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