A wise man who won multiple MVP awards and world championships on his way to the Hall of Fame once told me the key to effective teamwork in sports is trust. The other important factors – such as talent and skill and intellect – are minimized if there is no trust.
“It’s the foundation of everything that needs to be built to win,” he said. “Trust takes away doubt, and no clubhouse or locker room can succeed if guys are doubting each other.”
Which brings us to the Warriors and, specifically, Ty Jerome and Anthony Lamb. Despite being designated two-way players, residing at the bottom of the roster hierarchy, they are, for the moment, more vital than recent lottery picks James Wiseman, Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody.
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Jerome and Lamb are not as talented, mind you, but they are more crucial to the team’s chances of winning. Players and coaches trust them to do things, many of them subtle, conducive to winning.
The absence of Stephen Curry has inflated Jerome’s value; he is averaging 21.6 minutes in the five games since Curry was sidelined by a shoulder injury.
The absence of Andrew Wiggins inflates the value of Lamb; he is averaging 18.5 minutes in the 10 games since Wiggins went out with a groin injury.
The impact of Jerome and Lamb was on vivid display Sunday, when the pair came off the patchwork bench and played significant roles in a 123-109 win over the heavily favored Memphis Grizzlies.
Golden State Warriors
“This guy standing next to me, Ty Jerome, came in off the bench and gave huge minutes,” Draymond Green said during a postgame interview with ESPN Radio.
Coach Steve Kerr cited Lamb’s work in the first six minutes of the second quarter, when he shot 3-of-3 beyond the arc, as a “key stretch.” Another “key stretch,” according to Kerr, was when Jerome scored eight points in a 74-second span late in the third quarter.
“Our lead went back to double digits, and I think they had cut it to four or so,” Kerr said.
Actually, Golden State’s lead was down three when Jerome went briefly nuclear. By the end of the quarter, the Warriors were up by 15. The Grizzlies got no closer than 13 in the fourth quarter.
Game over.
Jerome played 22 minutes, scoring a season-high 14 points on 6-of-9 shooting, including 2-of-4 from deep. He also had four rebounds, one assist and one steal, finishing a team-best plus-23 in plus/minus rating.
“He's been in this league for a few years and when he comes into the game, he settles us down,” Kerr said. “He doesn't turn it over. He makes great decisions and he's an excellent shooter. So, plus-23 for Ty in 22 minutes? Pretty impressive.”
Though Lamb somehow posted a minus-5 over 17 minutes, he totaled 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting, including 3-of-4 beyond the arc. He had three rebounds, two steals, one assist and one block.
“We know we don’t have Steph or Wiggs,” Lamb told our NBC Sports Bay Area’s Kerith Burke, “so being able to play a different way but still be the effective Warriors way, is the biggest thing we were focused on. A lot of guys stepped up: Moses, Ty, JK, Wise. Everybody that came off the bench was ready to play.”
Neither Jerome nor Lamb is a perfect player, obviously, but both benefit from spending a full four years in college as well as NBA experience with multiple teams. Jerome is 25, and Lamb will turn 25 next month. The oldest of the three lottery picks, Wiseman, is 21. Kuminga and Moody each turned 20 this year.
“They know how to play basketball,” one Warriors official said of Jerome and Lamb. “The other guys are still figuring it out.”
Jerome and Lamb know how to better complement the team’s veterans. Both tend to be where they need to be, when they need to be there, whether on offense or defense. Neither is prone to the glaring error or the cheap foul. They have been, for the most part, stars in their roles.
Which is all that is asked of Jerome and Lamb. Jerome conceded that he straddles the line between being deliberate and punching it into overdrive.
“I try to find the balance of doing that, but not interrupting a flow because the easiest buckets we can find are in transition,” he said. “You never want to be that guy that's kind of running back and slowing people down, especially when you got guys like JK who can get out on the open floor and are special athletes.”
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In an ideal world, Moody, the 14th overall pick in the 2021 NBA draft, would be in line to fill the backup guard minutes. And Kuminga, the seventh pick in that draft, would be filling some of the minutes that went to Wiggins.
Instead, the Warriors are turning first to Jerome and Lamb, two basketball vagabonds fighting to stay in the NBA.
Credit the trust factor that the late MLB Hall of Famer Joe Morgan highlighted during an extended parking-lot conversation 22 years ago.