Kurtenbach: 12 thoughts on the Warriors’ dozen-man rotation, season-opening win

The classic football axiom suggests that if you have two quarterbacks capable of starting a game, you actually don’t have a starting quarterback

Steve Kerr is trying to put a twist on that with the 2024-25 Warriors.

If you have a 12-man rotation, do you have a rotation at all?

Last week, the Warriors coach said that cutting down the Dubs’ rotation to 10 or 11 players was the most challenging part of his job. You could feel the anxiety the mere thought elicited in the Warriors’ coach.

So, ahead of Wednesday’s season opener, Kerr decided not to cut down his rotation at all. He rolled with 12.

After the blowout win in Portland, Kerr’s concern wasn’t the possibility of having too many cooks in the kitchen but rather that he was unable to expand the rotation to 13 players to give Lindy Waters a real run.

A 12-man rotation is, in a word, wild.

It can be seen as a positive — look at all the good players! — or a negative — this team is full of unremarkable options.

I imagine the opinion will vacillate by the game.

But it worked on Wednesday, as Kerr played full hockey shifts in a 139-104 win, and Steph Curry was able to skip the second half of the third quarter and the entire fourth quarter.

Here are 12 other thoughts on the game — one for each rotation spot.

• This 12-man rotation won’t last, but that’s because of inevitable injuries and rest, not play.

The presumed reason the Warriors went with 12 on Wednesday is because they were playing a tanking team and they could, in effect, extend the preseason.

But that would only be the case if it appeared the Warriors were playing for jobs. That’s not the sense I received from Wednesday’s contest. Kerr didn’t need more time to figure out who his best 10 players were; rather, he wants to experiment with how to use 12 players best. That’s a big difference and makes the start of this season all the more interesting.

• One such experiment is finding a way to play Jonathan Kuminga 25-plus minutes a night while also not putting him in lineups alongside Draymond Green at the 5. (This is for Green’s sake.) The compromise is a strange one — Green at the 4, Kuminga at the 3 (yikes), and Andrew Wiggins playing shooting guard.

Even for someone like me, who believes the concepts of positions are antiquated, this is a tough sell. Conceptually, the Warriors’ size with that lineup (Trayce Jackson-Davis and Steph Curry bookended it) should provide some defensive prowess, but it’s three slashers, a roller, and Curry. Is it any surprise the Dubs opened the game shooting 2-for-13?

I didn’t see any defensive upside with that lineup on Wednesday, but that was just one game.

• Ironically, the “big” lineup Kerr started was shorter at every single position compared to the Blazers’ starting five Wednesday.

• The Warriors have been keen to dispel the idea that Buddy Hield was brought to San Francisco as a Klay Thompson replacement.

But that, good friends, is precisely what Hield is.

Let’s be clear: I’m not talking about replacing the All-Star version of Thompson, one of the finest two-way players in recent NBA history. No, I’m talking about the post-injury Thompson, specifically, the version of the future Hall of Famer we saw last season.

You certainly remember how Kerr wanted Thompson to come off the bench as the team’s sixth man—to be a gunner for the second unit. That went over so well that Thompson willingly moved to Texas.

But Hield is exactly what Kerr wanted to Thompson to be. Frankly, it’s a role that was, in fact, perfect for Thompson, if only ego didn’t stand in the way.

So far as I can tell, Hield doesn’t carry those hangups. First to be announced, first off the bench, or the 12th man, the wing just wants to shoot. Make or miss, he’s chucking. And with the Warriors keen to spam the stat sheet with 3-point attempts every night (remember when they disdained for the Houston Rockets’ methods?), Hield’s temperament is perfect, even if his shot will rarely match the level of perfection we saw Wednesday.

• My goodness, were the Warriors chucking on Wednesday. In all, the Dubs shot 48 3-pointers, tying the team’s highest output in a four-quarter game last season. (The Warriors had three contests where they shot more than 48 3-pointers last season; all three games went to at least one overtime period.)

• The chief chuckers, with eight, were De’Anthony Melton and Moses Moody. They went 5-for-16 from the floor. Meanwhile, Andrew Wiggins, Curry, and Hield all attempted seven 3-pointers — ironically, Curry had the worst shooting night.

• Of Wiggins’ seven 3-pointer attempts, five were above-the-break shots from the left wing. That’s his spot (66 attempts last season), even though he is a better shooter from the right wing (20-of-43).

• It was good to see Moody play on Wednesday. The contract extension helped grease the skids of playing time, surely, but his excellent preseason justified every minute he spent on the court. It wasn’t a great shooting night for Moody, but he has a decent leash from me (at least), given how hot his hand was coming into the campaign.

• Wednesday was a tough game for Kuminga, who made a habit of fumbling the ball under the basket, clanked a bunch of shots early, and somehow made up for a lot of that with a nice cut that led to a beautiful up-and-under layup.

• In a few months, if the Warriors find themselves at a point of extreme desperation, they can do much worse than grabbing Jerami Grant from the Blazers.

• Not to lose the plot here, but the 12-man rotation worked on Wednesday. The Warriors’ depth won a game where the starting lineup came out slow. Golden State’s bench outscored Portland’s bench by 33 points. The Warriors won by 35 points.

• Draymond Green picked up a technical foul in this game for complaining to the refs. Green wasn’t wrong in his umbrage, but he couldn’t stop himself despite the crew giving him ample opportunity to state his case without repercussions. Everyone’s patience has a limit.

I won’t proselytize Green or chastise him for losing his cool. We have plenty of time for that stuff, perhaps even in close games.

Instead, I’ll say that for all the preseason hang-wringing about how Green needs to be available for his team and that he needs to curtail his emotions to help make that possible, Green went out and provided a clear-cut, not-safe-for-kids’-ears reminder that a tiger doesn’t change his stripes. What makes Green great is also what makes him a liability for the Warriors — the line between risk and reward is thin, and Green is playing so hard he can’t help but go over. Lately it’s been quite often.

I don’t have a problem with it. Perhaps I’ve grown numb to Green. Maybe the nostalgia for the player he once was is too strong. But let’s not pretend anyone will change or “fix” a man with millions in the bank, four rings on his fingers, and grey in his beard. He is what he is.

That’s the good news for the Warriors. That’s the bad news, too.