Pat Spencer fits the Hollywood blueprint for an underdog sports story. Little (by NBA standards). Un-drafted. The guy didn’t play college basketball until he was a fifth-year senior following a legendary lacrosse career. He played overseas. Worked his way through the Warriors‘ system from the ground up — summer league to the G-League to, now, a two-way contract with the big club, for which he has turned into something of a cult hero.
Over his last four games, Spencer is averaging 16 points, 5.8 assists and 4 rebounds on 59% shooting. He’s made six of his last eight 3-pointers and is at 44% for the season. Not bad for a guy who couldn’t shoot a lick from deep in his lone college season.
Spencer has obviously put in a ton a work to get to this point. You don’t have to know the fine-print details of his journey to know that he surely could’ve given up at many points. He never did. And now here he is, a driving force behind Golden State salvaging a 3-2 record — which was seconds away from being 4-1 — over a five-game stretch without Stephen Curry.
Warriors fans are losing their collective mind over this guy, and it’s understandable. Spencer is on his own little version of a Linsanity run at the moment, barking out “I’m that motherf—er” in Philadelphia one night:
Waving goodbye to the Cleveland crowd the next:
Spencer is understandably feeling himself, and his game, and more importantly so is Steve Kerr, the man in control of the minutes. Kerr put Spencer into the starting lineup against the Cavs, and he responded with 19 points, seven assists and three rebounds in what was a huge win over an expected title contender without Curry, Jimmy Butler or Draymond Green in uniform.
The Warriors were, and for all intents and purposes still are, treading water for their playoff life in what is, as expected, a murderous Western Conference. When Curry found himself sidelined for two weeks, there was a real chance he was going to come back to a sub-.500 team.
Instead, he’s expected back on Friday night vs. the Timberwolves and suddenly the 13-12 Warriors, after a much-needed three-day break without a game, feel like a team with some juice behind them again. Give Spencer his flowers. He played a major part in this little turnaround, and he’s going to keep playing a part (we’ll see how major it is) even as the Warriors’ stars return to full health.
“We’ll have to find out,” Kerr said earlier this week on 95.7 The Game when asked what Spencer’s role will look like with Curry back. “I’m not going to take away all his minutes, I can tell you that. I’m definitely going to play him with Steph some. Some of it will depend on matchups. How well we can hold up defensively. … But the way Pat is playing, the way he’s impacting winning, the way he’s impacting just the competitive spirit of the team, I have to keep playing him.”
Here’s where it gets interesting, because up until these past few weeks everything Spencer has given the Warriors has been gravy. For the most part, he was a cheerleader with a mustache. Now he’s set a higher standard, and that comes with expectations.
Expectations, as a league scout said to me a few years back, are the root of frustration. I loved that line. I use it all the time. It’s so true. Particularly for NBA role players. Just look at a guy like Brandin Podziemski, who has become the punching bag of Warriors Twitter. People make it like the Warriors are a Little League team and Podz is only playing because Kerr is his dad. Like he doesn’t even belong on an NBA court.
It’s ridiculous. Podziemski has been a winning player pretty much from the that instant he arrived in Golden State. As a rookie, the Warriors outscored their opponents by 5.3 points per 100 possessions when he was on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass.
Last year, that number rose to plus-6.8, and when you filter out the small-sample stuff and look at only the Podz lineups that logged at least 50 possessions together, the Warriors were plus-22.6 with Podz playing. This year the inclusive number doesn’t look so great but it’s still a positive at plus-0.8, and again, the nine lineups with which Podziemski has logged at least 20 possessions are, on average, plus-10.5 per 100.
This is not a coincidence. Podziemski isn’t perfect, but at his best he’s a Josh Hart type of player to which all the things that add up to winning can be tied. On energy alone he’s super valuable. He’s an elite positional rebounder. He’s always at the top of the league in charges taken. On a team that, collectively, struggles to create downhill pressure, he actually gets into the paint. Every season Podziemski’s scoring numbers have gotten better on almost identical minutes. He’s currently shooting 40% on five 3-pointers per game.
This is a guy who makes things happen, plain and simple. If you think he hasn’t put together stretches like this one Spencer is on right now, you’re crazy.
The problem is the heightened expectations that have been placed on Podz, in part because of showings like this, There’s also the commitment Kerr has shown to letting him to play through mistakes when other young players haven’t been afforded the same freedom, which annoys fans when they watch him dribble himself dizzy and head-fake his way into bad shots and turnovers.
And let’s not forget the absolutely crazy expectations Podziemski put on himself when, prior to the season, he basically told Nick Friedell of The Athletic that he wants, and on some level expects, to be the player to whom Curry eventually hands the keys to the franchise.
There’s confidence and there’s delusion, and if Podziemski honestly thinks he’s the next franchise player, he’s leaning heavily toward the latter. But that’s just perception stuff. The reality is this: If Spencer were to put up Podziemki’s numbers over a 100-plus-game sample, it would be regarded as a massive success. For Podziemski, even as he has had plenty it leaves you wanting more. Expectations are the root of frustration.
Let Spencer play real minutes in a lot of real games. Let him feel the heat of postseason possessions with the ball in his hands. This isn’t suggest that what Spencer has achieved these past few weeks has been a fluke. Any time he’s gotten any minutes he has shown, increasingly, that he can play. He has almost surely made himself millions of dollars on his next deal. He might actually be better suited to initiate offense than Podziemski, who is at his best off the ball, attacking gaps against defenses in motion and can get himself into trouble trying to create too much chaos on his own.
Spencer knows his role in this way. He organizes. Keeps the ball and flow moving. That’s why Kerr wants to play him alongside Curry, because he’s a natural for possessions designed to run through a maze of off-ball movement until the greatest shooter ever eventually pops into the open, whereas Podz is sometimes apt to get a little impatient if he’s give control of the ball.
In a perfect world the fans won’t need to pit these guys against one another, but it’s true that they do serve some of the same functions and may, if Spencer keeps this up, be in competition for minutes.
Against OKC, Kerr subbed out Spencer, who was playing brilliantly as Golden State was in position to pull off a major upset without Curry and Butler (who left the game in the first half) against the best team in the league, at the 3:56 of the fourth quarter for Podziemski, and from that point forward the Warriors went from a four-point deficit to a 12-point loss. Kerr talked about the decision afterward and noted that it was a tough call because “both guys really played great games.”
It’s true. Both Podziemski and Spencer finished with 17 points. Spencer added six assists. Podziemski hit three of his five 3s and was 6-of-11 overall. And yet, fans were fuming that Kerr would dare put Podz back in the game. Spencer is their guy right now. Half of them wanted Podz traded a long time ago and remain annoyed by the organization’s two-timeline approach, of which Podziemski is a core part.
Spencer, meanwhile, can do no wrong at the moment. Give it some time. With enough exposure, all role players show their flaws. That’s why they’re role players. The only difference here is that Spencer knows he’s a role player. Hell, it took a potential career-changing four-game run to even be considered that. He hasn’t shouldered any real expectations yet, but they’re coming. Let’s see what he does with them.