Half the world away in Quezon City, Philippines, Joe Viray is providing some of the best analysis of the Warriors you can find.
A writer for SB Nation’s long-running Golden State of Mind blog, the follower count for Viray’s Twitter (@JoeVirayNBA) has exploded to north of 10,000 this season, nearly doubling since opening night. Despite being 16 hours ahead of the Bay Area, Viray shares his insights with smart video breakdowns and in-depth blogs on basketball’s nuances. His game rewatch threads are super insightful for breaking down the Warriors on offense, defense, players and trends.
Born in the Philippines, Viray also grew up in San Francisco and Richmond, attending Salesian high school. Over the years he has been drawn to smart basketball writers like Zach Lowe, before cultivating his own audience.
“I think people are just drawn to honest to goodness analysis,” Viray said. “I know the climate right now in terms of mainstream analysis right now is just hot takes and all that. But I think there’s a specific audience, where they just appreciate you telling them the ins and outs of the game.”
On Friday night, I spoke to Viray and picked his brain about Klay Thompson’s Sunday return, Steph Curry’s slump, Steve Kerr’s unique offensive system, Draymond Green’s true impact on defense and more. This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: How do you think Klay is going to change things offensively? Assuming that he looks like a similar player before his injuries.
A: Well, the spacing is obvious, right? I have been imagining Klay on a lot of their actions, just being on the weak side, space on the floor, and it's going to be harder for other teams to help off of that side of the floor because he's there, right? And I believe the shooting is still there. You know, it's never going to leave Klay, no matter how old he is.
I do want to watch how he is as an off-ball mover, moreso than he is as a stationary guy. He had two lower leg injuries and that affects your movement a lot, both on the offense and the defensive side of things. And pre-injury, Klay was known as one of the best off ball movers and cutters in the league, right? When you consider someone like Mikal Bridges in the Phoenix Suns, he's considered a very good cutter, very good off-ball mover. That was like Klay pre-injury. I'm going to monitor him off the ball when he comes back on Sunday. I would think he's not going to be as mobile and as energetic and that's to be expected because he's still trying to get his conditioning back, his game speed wind back.
Q: Because his game is predicated on breaking off screens, right? Do you feel like that's going to be the key for him -- if he's still able to create that separation?
A: Create that separation off the ball and also just him moving off the ball so it creates chaos. When you have Klay and Steph both running around, that just creates a lot of chaos. So if Klay can do that first couple of games, then it's going to be pretty, pretty good.
Q: How about defensively? I mean, again, we have to see how he's moving around and everything, but I thought it was funny a couple of weeks ago, Draymond jokes like, 'Hey, Klay is going to come back is going to be a stretch four.' Realistically, he kind of will be, right?
A: Especially if he's not being counted on as someone who can keep up laterally with quicker wings and guards. So it's not out of the question that he'll be someone who can defend those fours [power forwards] in the low post. He's shown that in the past, like an example I can remember is against Kevin Love in the Finals, where he gave Kevin Love from some pretty hard possessions on the post. So he can. He can be a four. We've seen Otto Porter Jr., be the four, too. Even though Otto's bigger than Klay. I would say on the offensive end of things, if Klay can also stretch the floor as a four, if he can also do consistently then I think it wouldn't be it wouldn't be crazy if you see a lineup of like Steph, [Jordan] Poole, [Andrew] Wiggins, Klay and Draymond [Green], to close games out.
Q: Do you think with a combo of Klay, Curry and Poole -- there's enough shots there to make it work?
A: I think so. All three of them are pretty unselfish. You've seen how the KD [Kevin Durant], Steph and Klay dynamic worked. Not saying that it's going to be on the same level, but there is precedent for those three to keep the shots pretty much balanced and pretty much spread the floor. And they're going to feed the hot hand, too. We've seen Steph give up the ball and recognize who's waxing hot at that moment.
Steph is pretty much the most unselfish superstar out there. So, you know, I'm not too worried about the distribution of the ball. They'll get their own each of them, they'll get their shots, they'll get their opportunities and they'll get open from each other. So that's the exciting part.
Q: What's going on right now with the Warriors offense in general? It just seems to me like they're not getting the easy shots they usually get, or creating separation from defenders.
A: They're just in a general slump and, you know, when Steph is in a slump, it kind of translates into the entire team because he's the engine of the offense. But then when you have a team look for the outside shot, the 3-point shot, and it's not falling in. Because that's the thing about threes right there -- they're have a high variance in terms of success rate. One day they could be hitting half or nearly half of threes and then the next game they're not going in. So it's just the nature of their shot diet, the shot selection.
I wrote about this a few days ago, the Warriors have this recent tendency to over pass. For a team that passes a lot, with a lot of assists and stuff like that, you do have a tendency to over pass a bit. In the last game [against the New Orleans Pelicans], there were a couple instances where Wiggins had a wide-open layup, but he opted to pass it out to the corner to Damion Lee and Lee missed the shot. So you had the two points there, the layup there, the wide-open layup, but then you didn't take it. Steph also is guilty of that too, where he had that turn over and he passed it to no one. Sometimes they overcomplicate stuff and when they overthink stuff, they tend to over pass. And right now, I think that's the main problem. They can't find a way to just keep it a bit simple.
Q: It seemed like before, it was just so effortless and natural for the offense. And now it just seems kind of discombobulated. And with Steph's slump, Kerr has offered up things like fatigue. I've seen people say he's simply just missing open shots this year. What are some things that are kind of holding him back? I mean, he's still dropping 24 [points] a game over his past 15 [games], but his efficiency clearly isn't there.
A: Well, like he said, they're just not going in, right? It's just one of those things where someone like him as a high-volume 3-point shooter, they go through these really, really bad slumps. And with Steph, when you compare it to other superstars, his slumps look worse than other superstar slumps just because of the nature of his game. In terms of his physical condition, I don't particularly see anything that denotes that he's in decline or something like that. Physically, he seems like he can still get past this man, he can still take his man off the dribble and all that. Not as quickly as he could when he was like 26, 27, but he still has no problem with getting past his man.
I just think it's one of those, you know, he's a bit in his head. Yeah, like what I said, he's overthinking it a bit and that kind of feeds into his shots not falling in. So I'm not particularly worried about Steph. Like we all know historically, especially after the All-Star break, he tends to go into this super-duper, hyper insane God mode. You know, that's a pattern that's a true pattern. You look at his career and it's after the All-Star break -- just something clicks. You know, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has a couple of like eight, nine, 10 3-point makes and all that. So, yeah, I'm not too worried about him at this point, and I think Klay's return on Sunday is going to invigorate him. It's going to invigorate the team.
Q: When the Warriors are having offensive success, do they set more screens and create more off-ball movement than the other 29 teams in the league?
A: Yeah, I mean, they're pretty much tops in the league in a lot of off-ball screening. If you think about it, the league is a pretty heavy pick-and-roll league. Where it's just on-ball, pick-and-roll and then rinse, repeat. But we all know how Kerr likes their typical -- set up high screen, and everyone just spreads the floor kind of offense. It's pretty safe to say that the Dubs are a unique offense in the sense that they do a lot more off-ball motion. They do a lot more off-ball screening. They do a lot of dribble handoffs and all that action at the elbows action in the low post because we all know how they like their split action.
So that's the thing, right? When opposing teams face the Warriors, especially with Steph playing, it's like we have to adjust to a whole new thing because they're used to playing the typical pick-and-roll offense right from other teams. But when you face the Dubs it's like they have to adjust to a new mindset, they have to adjust to a new game plan. And that's the thing about the Warriors offense, that they shock opposing teams into this whole new thing. Yeah, and especially with Steph on the floor where they have to pay special extra attention to this force who can beat you in several ways. So, you know, the last time I checked, the Warriors offense was around eighth or ninth in the league right now in offensive rating, they've declined a bit.
Defenses have been really, really honing in on Steph. And honing in on Steph depends on the other guys to have their 'A' game -- their 'B-plus' or 'A' game. And if they don't, and that's pretty much going to be an uphill climb like what we saw against the [Dallas] Mavs, right? When Poole didn't really have the best game against the Mavs and everyone else didn't.
Q: It seems like whenever this team struggles, it's usually because of the offense. The defense is always going and Draymond is the heart of that. I saw you post about his close-out block ability and a time he stopped Nemanja Bjelica from being switched onto Devin Booker before it could even happen. What are some intangible, non-box score ways that Draymond affects the defense?
A: For me, the most amazing thing about him is he knows his personnel. You listen to him, talk about his games where he knows this dude is shooting this percentage, or this dude is shooting that percentage from this area and all that. All those little statistical nuggets that he knows like the back of his hand.
The most recent one I posted was him not contesting Tyler Herro's floater. And I dug a little bit. When you look at it, it seems like it's nothing. But then I looked at Herro's stats on runners and floaters, and he's not that efficient on them, on floaters. And I wouldn't put it past Draymond to know that -- that he was not that effective on floaters this season. And what he did was he didn't contest the floater. Because one, he didn't want to give up an offensive rebound or a lob to his man. The big man, Ömer Yurtseven. Also, two, because he knows that that shot is going to most likely miss. So, he's going to play the percentages on that shot.
The blocks, the steals, the other kinds of stops are the ones that are eye-popping, the ones that are going to go on the highlight reel. But it's also those other things where he chooses not to do things where he doesn't go for the deal. He doesn't go off the block because he knows this guy is going to do anything with it. Those are the ones that really are, I would say, the test testament to his basketball IQ. Yeah, it's just he knows his personnel, he knows the schemes, the lineups, and he's just so smart. He's just so smart. A basketball player. You really got to appreciate the nuances. You have to really know that to appreciate that.
Q: Who matches up the best with them in the Western Conference? I know everyone is already saying, 'Warriors-Brooklyn! Warriors-Brooklyn!' for the Finals, but what about the West?
A: On the conference, I would say the [Memphis] Grizzlies are the ones where you could see them having trouble. If the Grizzlies, say, finished fourth or fifth and they face each other in the second round, the Grizzlies could be a really, really hard time and take them all the way to seven [games]. And when you tire yourself out of the second round against that tough Grizzlies team, that could be trouble.
From the East, I think the Bucks are a tough matchup just because of Giannis [Antetokounmpo] and just because they have a lot of long defenders who can pretty much switch everything on offense and what they're trying to do. They're pretty long, so Steph is going to have a hard time with that length. The Warriors are going to have a hard time generating a lot of advantages because the [Milwaukee] Bucks, they're good at shutting down those advantages. And of course, Giannis is the toughest guard out there outside of Steph, I would think. Even if, let's say the Nets have Kyrie [Irving] back consistently in the playoffs, I would still be worried about the Bucks.
