The Golden State Warriors lost for the third time in five games on Wednesday, falling to the Boston Celtics at home 99-86. The Warriors looked tired and lackadaisical throughout, and have yet to find a groove since the injury to Kevin Durant on Feb. 28.
A stretch midway through the fourth quarter decided the game, when head coach Steve Kerr elected to go with an unconventional lineup, featuring Ian Clark, Patrick McCaw and James Michael McAdoo, while sitting both Draymond Green and Klay Thompson. The Celtics promptly went on a 10-0 run in just over a minute, ultimately putting the contest out of reach.
Kerr explained his decision to go with the unconventional grouping, and specifically the decision to play Clark in crunch time, when he joined Tolbert and Lund Thursday afternoon.
“Yeah I mean that’s why I went with Ian (Clark), kind’ve mid-fourth quarter,” Kerr said when asked if shooting issues caused him to tweak the lineup. “We just weren’t able to make anything, I think we were 6-for-30 from three.
“Ian’s been great all year in terms of just being ready to come in and hit a shot, he came off a great game in Atlanta – I think he had 10 points in eight minutes in Atlanta the previous game – so I kind’ve took a flier and just thought you know what, put him out there and maybe he knocks down a shot and he really didn’t get much of a look while he was out there, but you’re right. We were struggling to make shots and space the floor and so we’ve got to mix and match a little bit without KD and find a hot hand and try to roll with that. (Against the Celtics) we didn’t have a hot hand so we were scrambling.”
Kerr admitted the team, mired in a hellish stretch of seven games in 12 nights, just ran out of gas against Boston.
“I thought we ran out of gas,” Kerr said. “I thought we had some good offense the first three quarters, we moved the ball pretty well. We had several moments during the game where I thought we could take it from (down) six or seven to 12…I thought in the fourth quarter we just kind’ve ran out of gas and their defense put a lot of pressure on us and we just couldn’t close the game.”
Listen to the full interview below