Steve Kerr: Chris Paul’s role to be decided during training camp
Chris Paul has never come off the bench in his 18-year career–for perspective, he has started in all 1,214 games he’s appeared in. But it is no surefire conclusion that Paul will start this season for the Golden State Warriors, Paul’s fourth team in six years, according to head coach Steve Kerr.
“I think that’ll be a case where you get three weeks of training camp before that first game,” Kerr said, according to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, at Team USA practice Friday. “We’ll just look at all kinds of different combinations.
“The main thing is we know all those guys are gonna play a lot of minutes. But the luxury of having Chris Paul to add to this group that we’ve been lucky enough to have for a decade … pretty remarkable. He is one of the great competitors in the game. He’s one of the great point guards of all time. I think he’s a great addition for us, because of his ability to control games, control tempo, take care of the ball.”
The Warriors had 25 different starting lineup combinations last season, five fewer than their 2021-22 championship season. Their base starting five–Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green and Kevon Looney–started in 23 games together last regular season, going 13-10, but outscored opponents by 22.2 points per 100 possessions in 705 non-garbage time minutes together, per Cleaning The Glass.
They finished in the 92nd percentile in NET Rating and in the 95th percentile in effective field goal percentage together. Over the last three seasons, playoffs included, that aforementioned lineup has started 36 games (21-15) together, and has outscored opponents by 20.8 points per 100 when they’ve shared the floor.
In short, it will be hard to drift away from that. Paul, 38, will rightfully have to earn it, even if his minutes slightly dip from 32 minutes a night.
He also plays a completely different style of basketball than Golden State’s motion-heavy offense that revolves around constant player movement that heavily utilize second- and third-side actions. But the Warriors relentlessly used pick-and-roll–Paul’s specialty–against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Semifinals, and Kerr believes Golden State can benefit from diversifying its menu with Chris Paul now in the mix.
“One of the things Steph said … I thought his most revealing quote after the Lakers series was that we didn’t have enough variety in the ways that we could score,” Kerr told Warriors beat reporter Tim Kawakami of The Athletic in late June. “And everything was high pick-and-roll with Steph. That whole series. We just couldn’t create enough. When we’ve been our best, this team has had a lot of good passing, a lot of connectors, a lot of guys who understood how to play with Steph and free him up and use his gravity to slip for layups or create shots on the other side of the floor.
“We have to maintain that type of variety in our game somehow. We lost some of that this year. So hopefully we can regain some of that next year. … When we had to have a bucket, we’ve leaned on the high pick-and-roll, Steph/Draymond. It’s our best play. That’s our 98-mph fastball. But if you throw that down the middle enough, somebody’s hitting it into McCovey Cove. And that’s what happened against the Lakers, we just didn’t have the variety. We didn’t have the changeup, as Steph said.”
It’s worth mentioning that, while he might not start right away, he could find himself in the starting lineup at different points of the season depending on injuries–similar to Jordan Poole, who Paul was traded for.
Where do you think he will slot into the rotation? Let us know in the comments!
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