What we learned as Kuminga drops career-high 34 in Warriors’ loss

What we learned as Kuminga drops a career-high 34 in Warriors’ loss originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

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The third time wasn’t the charm for the Warriors on Friday night against the LA Clippers, as they lost 102-92 at the Intuit Dome.

The Warriors have now played the Clippers three times this season and have lost all three games.

Without Stephen Curry and Draymon Greenthe Warriors were unable to generate any offense for most of the night. They scored 21 points in the first quarter, 22 in the second and 19 in the third before exploding for 30 in the fourth.

Jonathan Kuminga appeared offensively. All night long he dominated around the rim, scoring a career-high 34 points. He was extremely efficient, making 11 of 19 field goals, with most of his points coming in the paint. He also made a career-high 11 free throws and missed just three times at the charity stripe.

If only others around Kuminga could say the same. The Warriors battled until the end, trailing by as many as 21 points and 19 heading into the fourth quarter, although they simply weren’t shorthanded enough on the first night of a back-to-back.

After starting the season 12-3, the Warriors are now 3-12 in their last 15 games.

Here are three takeaways from the Warriors’ latest loss, which dropped them to 15-15 on the season.

Kuminga came ready

Before Friday night, the Warriors had been without Curry and Green once this season. The result was a six-point victory against the Houston Rockets on December 5, where Kuminga had perhaps the best game of his young career.

Kuminga in that contest started as a power forward and played 33 minutes. He scored a then-career-high 33 points on 13-of-22 shooting, grabbed seven rebounds and was a plus-7. It seemed likely to start Green and Curry again on Friday night in Los Angeles, but Steve Kerr took a different path. Instead, Kerr started Kyle Anderson at power forward to fill Green’s role at small forward and kept Kuminga off the bench.

And Kuminga responded to his coach’s challenge, playing aggressively under control, using movement to get easy baskets. Despite coming off the bench, he was the Warriors’ leading scorer after the first quarter with five points and led both teams with 13 points at halftime on 4-of-8 shooting and made all four of his free throws. Through three quarters, Kuminga reached 19 points, but no other Warrior reached double figures.

Kuminga has now scored at least 25 points in two of his last three games and has nine 20-point games this season.

Kuminga also had 10 rebounds and five assists, marking the first 30-10-5 game of his four-year NBA career.

Schroder keeps fighting

He Dennis Schröder The Warriors acquired from the Brooklyn Nets have not been the same player since they changed their number and wore different colors. His shooting problems continued at the worst possible time.

A game without Curry should have been an invitation for Schroder to get the ball in his hands and take command. It wasn’t. Kerr got Schroder to control the ball, but he continued to come up short.

Literally. Schroder scored seven points on 3-of-11 shooting and missed all six of his 3-pointers, giving him four single-digit scoring nights in his five games as a Warrior. It seems like everything is missing right now. That’s not something to blame Kerr for. The coach ran pick-and-rolls over and over again for Schroder, but nothing could get him going.

In 23 games with the Nets this season, Schroder shot 45.2 percent from the field and 38.7 percent from three. Now in five games as a Warrior, Schroder has made a modest 28 percent of his shots overall (14 of 50) and is shooting 17.4 percent from 3-point range (4 of 23).

Wiggins? Buddy? Hello?

Schroder was far from the only reason the Warriors’ offense was the vomit emoji in human form. Whenever the Warriors don’t have Curry on the court, everyone else has to step up. Too much for that.

Andrew Wiggins didn’t give Golden State anything offensive, and neither friend iced.

The Warriors’ second-best 3-point shooter, Hield, made six 3-pointers and made just one. Hield’s nine rebounds were a season-high, but that’s not what he’s here to do. His number one job is to score points and hit 3-pointers, something he didn’t do much of in Inglewood.

Hield scored five points on 2-of-8 shooting in 22 minutes. In some ways, he was better than Wiggins.

Golden State’s second-leading scorer coming into the game, behind only Curry, also had five points. Wiggins was 1 of 3 from deep and also hit just one of his eight 3-pointers. His five points are tied for a season low.

The floundering Warriors have to learn to win with and without Curry right now. The main players who should be able to step up in his absence were the ones who didn’t show up.

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