Warriors training camp takeaways: Competition for new roles underway originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
LAIE, Hawaii – The first day of Warriors training camp for the 2024-25 NBA season on the BYU-Hawaii campus wasn’t so much about individuals standing out or combinations of players impressing coaches. Steve Kerr’s point of emphasis Tuesday instead was structure.
The goal is to create a foundation in Hawaii and build from there.
Kerr of course wants the Warriors to play instinctively. Clarity of roles for new additions like De’Anthony Melton, Kyle Anderson and Buddy Hield, as well as the young core of Brandin Podziemski, Jonathan Kuminga, Trayce Jackson-Davis and Moses Moody, also have to be established. That creates more work perhaps than usual during training camp for a coach that has firmly created his style of play over the last decade, leading to four championships, but Kerr appears up to the task.
Since his arrival in 2014, Kerr also hasn’t been shy about leaning on others to get the best out of his team. The latest example is the additions of Terry Stotts and Jerry Stackhouse to his coaching staff. Kerr competed against Stotts for years when he served as the Portland Trail Blazers’ head coach, and already is finding him to be an invaluable asset to his offense.
“He’s been a coach who has relied on movement and flow,” Kerr said. “He taught his teams in Portland to play with a lot of rhythm but with a little more structure. That was one of the reasons I brought him here. We believe in the same kind of basketball, with the movement and the ball changing sides.
“He’s been around this league a long time. He’s got great ideas, he’s a great teammate. I’m thrilled that Terry’s here and he’ll really help in that regard.”
Here are three takeaways from the first day of training camp, which featured comments from Kerr, Kuminga and Steph Curry.
Who Starts Next To Steph?
The biggest question throughout camp will be seeing who plays alongside Steph Curry in the Warriors’ starting lineup. Curry had the ideal running mate in building a legendary duo between him and Klay Thompson, but Thompson’s marriage between he and the Warriors came to an end this summer when he became a Dallas Maverick. Curry sees options to take an open slot, with each bringing different characteristics.
“We have a defensive-minded guy like Melton,” Curry said. “You’ve got a guy who’s a connector and can put the ball on the floor, create like BP, and obviously me and BP started a couple times last year. You’ve got Buddy who can shoot, who spaces the floor and is a veteran. We’ve got a lot of options.”
Each player brings a different skill set to the floor and a different level of experience. Hield is going into his ninth season, Melton into his seventh and Podziemski into only his second – but the second-year pro gained the most trust as a rookie ever under Kerr.
The Warriors head coach shared a desire for two-way players as the Warriors look to create a defensive identity, which could lead to who will be Curry’s main partner.
While the starting shooting guard position is under the biggest spotlight, other openings appear wide open.
Preaching Competition
Kerr’s four core values he has held with him since the start of his coaching career are joy, mindfulness, compassion and competition. The last part is what is overlooked far too often. For a team that has gone from champions to needing seven games to fend off the Sacramento Kings and then losing to them in the play-in tournament, Kerr is done settling.
He said time and time again over the offseason that only two spots in the starting lineup were guaranteed: Curry and Draymond Green. Maybe only one position can be written in permanent ink.
“There is competition across the board,” Kerr said. “It’s not as simple as, ‘Who is going to be the 2?’ It’s got to be, ‘Who is going to be the 5? Who’s the 4?’ We know that Steph is the 1. But what’s the combination?”
Curry is a given. Shooting guard is a guess. One still can assume Green will hold a frontcourt starting spot, unless Kerr deems him the perfect player to lead the second group and still close games. Andrew Wiggins, who was the only Warrior who didn’t practice due to feeling under the weather, is being pushed to get as close as possible to being back to the All-Star caliber player he was in the Warriors’ 2021-22 championship season. Trayce-Jackson Davis became a starter at the end of last season as a rookie, and Kuminga of course wants to be an everyday starter as he seeks a massive payday.
“It’s definitely more challenging,” Kuminga said of training camp. “We got new guys and everyone wants to start and prove it. It’s great. It’s actually great going at each other every day and that’s just going to give us that mentality of coming out there and playing hard.”
Let It Fly
The last Warrior on the court by a large margin was Hield. As everybody else piled into buses for a 10-minute drive back to the team hotel, Hield put up shot after shot after shot with personal trainer Trey Slate.
That’s what Hield was brought to the Bay to do: Hit shots and put points on the scoreboard, preferably three points.
In the last two seasons, Hield made 507 3-pointers on 40.7-percent shooting. Thompson in that time made 569 threes on a 40-percent clip. Despite playing 18 fewer games, Thompson also attempted 178 more threes than Hield the past two seasons. Though Hield isn’t a player-for-player replacement for Thompson, he will be beyond the arc.
And he isn’t alone.
“I want to be a high-level 3-point shooting team,” Kerr said. “I think that’s important for us. The big shift is, Klay’s not here. We were fourth in the league last year in 3-point attempts last year, but Klay probably shot eight to 10 of them himself every game. We’re going to have to fill the void, and that’s going to come from multiple people.”
Thompson, in fact, averaged nine 3-pointers per game last season. Kerr mentioned Podziemski, Wiggins, Moody and Melton in his answer. Other players also will have to be part of the equation – a group effort by many.
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