Warriors' bench is outscoring one of their starters

The Golden State Warriors depth chart has Stephen Curry and Yaxel Lendeborg starting, and that part makes sense. They are the two leading scorers on the roster. The curious part sits at the other end of the starting five, where Will Richard is expected to start against the Orlando Magic while two guards who come off the bench are scoring far more than he is.

Brandon Williams averages 11.4 points a game and De'Anthony Melton averages 10.0, both over a bench-sized workload. Richard averages 5.2. That is the story inside Golden State's rotation right now: the starting spots and the scoring do not line up neatly.

Below, we rank every player on the Warriors' rotation by points and minutes, look at where the bench beats the starters, and check how four injuries change the order. All figures come from the season so far, a sample of six to nine games per player at the time of writing.

Golden State are expected to start Lendeborg and Brandin Podziemski, Curry, Draymond Green and Richard against Orlando tomorrow. Confirmed lineups arrive about 30 minutes before tip-off, and this five allows for everyone on the injury report, so it is the safe read rather than a final call.

On paper it is a mix of scorers and connectors. Green is there for what he does as a passer: he leads the team with 7.0 assists a game, ahead of Podziemski's 4.7 and Curry's 4.4. But he has taken only 3.0 points a game across seven games, so the scoring has to come from elsewhere.

That is where the tension starts. Of the five, Curry, Lendeborg and Podziemski rank first, second and third in points. Richard sits tenth among the twelve players listed. The bench has more scoring than the last starting spot.

Curry is averaging 29.9 points in 28.7 minutes across seven games, shooting 46.9% overall and 44.0% from three. He plays fewer minutes than Lendeborg and Podziemski and still scores nearly nine points a game more than Lendeborg (29.9 minus 21.0 is 8.9). He is third on the team in minutes, behind Podziemski's 33.2 and Lendeborg's 31.8.

Lendeborg has been the other engine. In nine games he is putting up 21.0 points, 7.1 rebounds and 4.1 assists in 31.8 minutes, and he is shooting 49.2% from the field and 39.6% from three. He leads the Warriors in rebounding by a clear margin: Charles Bassey is second at 5.3.

Podziemski carries the heaviest minutes of anyone on 33.2 a night and delivers 15.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.7 assists. His three-point shooting is the soft spot at 34.8%, but he is the clear third option.

The Warriors are 6-3 over their last nine games. After the top three scorers, the drop is steep: the next best is Williams on 11.4.

Here is every Warriors player who has been in the rotation, ordered by points a game. The top three are the ones you would expect. After that, the order tells a different story from the lineup card.

Read the table from the fourth row down and the starting five stops matching the scoring order. Williams and Melton are the fourth and fifth scorers on the team, and neither is in the expected starting five. The full rotation and minutes for every player makes the gap plain: the last starting spot belongs to a player who ranks tenth in scoring among the twelve listed.

Brandon Williams plays exactly as many minutes as Richard, 17.8 a game, and scores more than double his points: 11.4 against 5.2. Over eight games he adds 2.6 rebounds and 2.6 assists. He does it on modest efficiency, 40.0% from the field and 33.3% from three, so it is volume rather than accuracy that sets him apart.

That makes him the clearest case on the roster for a bigger role. Same minutes, far more points.

De'Anthony Melton gets more run than Williams, 22.3 minutes a game, and fills in more places. He scores 10.0 points, grabs 4.7 rebounds, hands out 2.2 assists and leads the team with 1.7 steals a game. He is also the better shooter from deep, hitting 42.2% from three against Williams' 33.3%.

His overall field goal percentage is 41.8%, a shade above Williams' 40.0%. The rebounding and the steals make his 10.0 points part of a wider contribution.

To be fair to Will Richard, the shooting is not the problem. He is making 46.2% of his shots and 42.9% of his threes over nine games, a better field goal percentage than both Williams and Melton. The gap is volume: 5.2 points, 1.8 rebounds and 1.0 assists in 17.8 minutes.

He is a spacing role player who takes few shots and makes a healthy share of them. Whether that is what Golden State want from the fifth starter is the question the numbers raise, not answer.

The bench order from sixth man down on the depth chart is built from projected minutes for the game, which is why it differs from the season averages above. Gui Santos is first off the bench at 21.8 minutes, then Melton at 18.2, Al Horford at 16.8 and Georges Niang at 16.6.

Notice that Williams does not appear in that first group, even though he outscores everyone on it. The two minute columns below come from different measures on the page, so they are not meant to match, but they show the same thing: Santos is the only one of the four projected for more minutes than his season average.

Two role players stand out for what they do in limited time. Al Horford is shooting 45.5% from three over seven games, higher than Curry's 44.0%, on 18.6 minutes a night.

Charles Bassey, meanwhile, shoots 65.5% from the field and blocks 1.0 shots a game in just 11.8 minutes. The efficiency is the reason he stays in the conversation.

The injury list is long. The Warriors have four players on the report, and the who is out for the Warriors answer matters for the shape of the rotation. Kristaps Porzingis, Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody are all out. Gui Santos is day-to-day, and his status matters most for the bench order, because he is the first man off the bench.

The page lists Santos as expected back on 7 November.

Three things stand out tomorrow. First, whether the expected five holds, because confirmed lineups come about 30 minutes before tip-off and the NBA starting lineups page will show the final names. Second, whether Williams or Melton gets more minutes than the projected 18.2 for Melton, given how they have scored. Third, whether Santos is available.

The Warriors v Magic preview has the game context. For the rotation itself, check the latest Warriors lineup on Statz before tip-off.

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