Injured Warriors role players Gary Payton II, Otto Porter Jr., and Andre Iguodala were all able to fully partake in a relatively light team practice on Tuesday, tweets Anthony Slater of The Athletic. The team has a full contact practice scheduled for Wednesday. According to Slater, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr indicated he should have a better sense of the injured players’ availability for the start of the series following that session.
There’s more out of Golden State:
- Payton is “trending” toward being a game-time decision for Game 1 of the 2022 NBA Finals, slated to tip off on Thursday, per Shams Charania of Stadium (Twitter video link). “We still got some boxes to fill,” Payton said of his availability, per Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN (via Twitter). Payton has been sidelined since suffering a left elbow fracture in Game 2 of the Warriors’ conference semifinals series against the Grizzlies.
- Payton won the NBA’s 2021/22 Bob Lanier Community Assist Award this season, the Warriors announced in a press statement. The honor is meant to reward players for outstanding community outreach. The league and award sponsor Kaiser Permanente will donate $75K to Payton’s charity, the GPII Foundation, which helps young people struggling with language-based learning disabilities.
- Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojevic has helped Golden State starting center Kevon Looney gobble up rebounds like never before, writes Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic. Thompson notes that Looney is grabbing 21.6% of possible rebounds when on the court during the 2022 playoffs. Should the trend continue, that would be a top-50 all-time postseason rebounding rate. “Rebounding is something that I’ve always enjoyed,” Looney said. “I made a lot of strides this year. I feel like I’ve always been pretty good at it. I always have my moments. But this year I’ve been way more consistent, and really more locked in on it, and that’s been able to make a difference.”
Rank 44 in 75 years of playoffs history (includes Wilt)
Looney is grabbing 21.6% of possible rebounds when on the court during the 2022 playoffs. He adds that, should the trend continue, that would be the No. 44 best rebounding rate in the history of the playoffs.
This decade
It is not easy to repeat the nba finals appearances
Next year
Warriors have to beat healthy Clippers
Celtics have to beat healthy Bucks
Clippers and Bucks have traded away all the available draft assets
In case anyone is curious, all time leader in rebound percentage regular season is Andre Drummond. Rodman is number 2.
It will be interesting to see what Iggy does after he retires. It would be cool to see him become a GM or front office executive.
With his understanding of the little nuances of the game he may make a great head coach.
No need for Iguodala to bother applying in Memphis!
This is gonna be a low key physical series it’s just going to be 22ft away from the basket not 5 like the decades before
Grant might be the more valuable Williams this series for Boston. Opens up the paint more for Tatum and Brown to drive. 35% from 3 in the series will do the trick.
Id like to see Brown get a little more greedy than the demeanor he usually plays with this series.
Brown does not really have moves or shake, so he has to worry about running into defenders… especially in a series, when opponents are used to the other’s tendencies.
And GSW defenders get where to position themselves.
Poole has his spontaneity, Curry his balance, Klay his quick-striking… they don’t need a runway.