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Jonathan Kuminga scores 26 points in loss to Clippers – NBC Sports Bay Area & California

Posted on by Taylor Reeves
Jonathan Kuminga scores 26 points in loss to Clippers – NBC Sports Bay Area & California

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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 lost all three games.

Without Steph Curry and Draymond Green, the Warriors were unable to generate offense for most of the evening. They scored 21 points in the first quarter, 22 in the second and 19 in the third quarter before exploding to 30 points in the fourth.

Jonathan Kuminga was offensive. He dominated around the rim throughout the night, scoring a career-high 34 points. He was extremely efficient, scoring 11 of 19 from the field, scoring the most points on the team. He also made a career-best 11 free throws and missed just three times at the charity stripe.

If only others in Kuminga could say the same. The Warriors fought until the end, even trailing by 21 and 19 points by the fourth quarter, despite simply not being shorthanded enough on the first night of back-to-back games.

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

Here are three takeaways from the Warriors’ recent loss, which dropped their mark to 15-15 on the season.

Kuminga was ready

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

Kuminga started this competition at 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 that he would join Green and Curry again on Friday night in LA, but Steve Kerr went a different route . Instead, Kerr used Kyle Anderson at power forward to take over Green’s role at point forward and kept Kuminga off the bench.

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

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

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

Schröder continues to fight

The Dennis Schroder that the Warriors acquired from the Brooklyn Nets has not been the same player since changing his number and wearing different colors. His shooting problems continued at the worst possible time.

A game without Curry should have been an invitation for Schroder to keep the ball in his hands and take over. That wasn’t it. Kerr brought the ball under Schroder’s control, but failed again and again.

Literally. Schroder scored seven points on 3 of 11 shooting and missed all six of his 3-point shots, giving him four nights with single-digit points in his five games as a Warrior. At the moment he seems to be lacking everything. Kerr is not responsible for this. The coach kept running the pick-and-roll for Schröder, 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. In five games as a Warrior, Schroder has made just 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 in. So much for that.

Andrew Wiggins gave Golden State nothing offensively and neither did Buddy Hield.

The Warriors’ second-leading 3-point shooter, Hield made six threes and was successful only once. Hield’s nine rebounds were a season high, but that’s not what he’s here for. His primary role is scoring points and hitting threes, something he didn’t do much of in Inglewood.

Hield scored five points on 2 of 8 shooting in 22 minutes. Somehow he was better than Wiggins.

Golden State’s second-leading scorer, who entered the game behind only Curry, also scored five points. Wiggins was 1 of 3 from deep and made just one of his eight 2-point shots. His five points are a season low.

The reeling Warriors must now learn to win with and without Curry. The key players who could step up in his absence were not there.

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