The Golden State Warriors won back-to-back games for just the second time this season, as they followed up a win over the New York Knicks by beating the Houston Rockets. No one would have predicted before the start of the campaign that it would take the Warriors over a month into the season to do it twice, and there’s a lot of blame to go around for their early season.
Their bench unit wasn’t performing up to expectations, starters like Klay Thompson were playing terrible basketball, and their defense was absolutely atrocious. Stephen Curry had to put in some otherworldly performances for them to win games and the only support he was really getting was from Andrew Wiggins, who has had a solid but unspectacular start to the campaign.
Steve Kerr Surprisingly Criticizes Warriors Star Andrew Wiggins
Wiggins is their second-leading scorer as he is averaging 18.4 points while shooting 49.3% from the field and 41.9% from beyond the arc, some pretty good numbers. Head coach Steve Kerr also had some high praise for him earlier this season when he said that Wiggins was playing the best basketball of his career, but things have changed a bit after that. After that win over the Rockets, Kerr made it clear that Wiggins needs to do better on the defensive end.
(starts at 2:58 mark):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG5rt8YYM1U
“He’s (Wiggins) gonna play better too. I don’t think his defense has been as good as it was last year. I think he knows that. It goes hand in hand with our team’s overall defense. I think every single guy has to look in the mirror and coaches too. We have to think about our schemes and possibly make some adjustments because we’re giving up too many points.”
Wiggins had the odd offensive explosion in the playoffs last season but where he really shone was on the defensive end. He somewhat helped slow down Luka Doncic in the Conference Finals and then did a good job on Jayson Tatum in the NBA Finals, but we haven’t seen that level of defense this time around. As Kerr said, though, everyone else has to get better on that end as well, as the poor defense they have played so far is unlike what we have seen from them over the years.
To their credit, there have been some improvements in these last two games, as it appears that the team meeting they had before the game against the Knicks did have a positive impact. The Warriors will now look to win 3 in a row for the first time this season when they head to New Orleans to take on the Pelicans.
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