FA: Spencer Dinwiddie Heads to DAL | 1 yr/vet min

[mvossman]

He came off the bench less because of Klay's ability and more because of the limitations on the Warriors roster as a whole and Kerr was trying things out. 

Their team had 1 guy over 6'9 (and it was Saric who is a perimeter big) and they suffered because of it. They basically had 6 combo guards and 6 tweener wings with Kevon Looney+Jackson-Davis+Saric manning the middle. That ain't going to cut it. Their bench lacked any consistent shooting and whenever Steph went to the bench the Warriors line-ups collapsed. Kerr tried tinkering the entire year to find any sort of consistent combination that had the starting lineup and bench happy while managing the egos. 


So if you were Kerr, who would you replace out of Steph/Klay/Wiggins/Dray/Looney ? Saric doesn't really fix their issues. Wiggins was replaced for Kuminga in December and it didn't really work. Draymond was suspended from December till January (during which Kuminga+Wiggins started and the Warriors went 7-8). 

In February the ONLY combination that Kerr had never tried was messing with the big 3 and Klay was the most expendable given they had a young rookie that could replicate some of what Klay can provide (but not nearly the same, hence why bench lineups collapsed). So Kerr tried it and what happened? Well the Warriors went 5-1 to start (3 of those wins came against CHA, WAS, and LAL). Then went 4-4 in the rest of those games Klay didn't start. Total of 8-6 with Klay off the bench vs. 33-30 in games he started. Not a huge difference at all. 


Point is, Klay has taken a step back, but he hasn't fallen off a cliff. Kerr tried to bring him off the bench to save a tumultuous season and it didn't have any meaningful impact. Their roster was flawed and couldn't survive Draymond Green being suspended a month and a half from his own ineptitude.

I don't think Klay has fallen off a cliff and I think he is easily a top 5 player on this roster, but I can see the fit argument that it might make sense to bring him off the bench.  But I don't see that playing out in the regular season.  This is a much better, deeper team than GS and can probably withstand a minor fit issue in the starting lineup for 5 or 10 minutes a game.  It will potentially be another conversation come playoff time, but we have a long time before we need to worry about that.