The only time Moses Moody checked in against the Nuggets, he went to the scorer’s table with Usman Garuba, Pat Spencer, Lester Quinones and Trayce Jackson-Davis.
Moody stepped onto the court with a reliable rookie, a former lacrosse superstar, a two-way player and an undrafted player who just minted a standard contract. One of these things is not like the others.
Moody, the 14th overall pick, has more pedigree than those other players. And, when given minutes, he hasn’t been bad; Moody’s box plus-minus is higher than that of Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga and Quinones. He’s averaging a career-high 7.8 points and 2.9 rebounds in 16.8 minutes per game.
But Moody has been squeezed out of Steve Kerr’s deep rotation. As someone who does lots of things well but nothing spectacularly, he has fallen victim to a numbers game. With Chris Paul returning for Golden State’s East Coast trip to Washington, New York, Toronto and Boston, there’s even less of a path to playing time for the third-year forward out of Arkansas.
“There’s only so many guys I can play,” Kerr said after Sunday’s loss to Denver. “I already had 11 guys in the rotation, which is almost impossible. Twelve is impossible.”
In the pecking order, Moody is now behind Paul, Kuminga, Thompson, Wiggins, Quinones, Gary Payton II and Dario Saric. That list spans options of varying skill sets, experience, caliber and position.
Moody will have to stay ready, but it might take two injuries for him to get back in the mix. Against Charlotte on Friday, with both Paul and Payton unavailable, he made a positive impact in eight minutes. The game before, with the same injury situation, he played 20 minutes against the Lakers.
Now that Kerr has a full complement of options, those kinds of nights will be rare for Moody going forward.
“There’s not enough minutes for everybody,” Kerr said.
The most interesting merchant of Moody’s minutes has been Quinones, who was converted from a two-way player to a standard contract last week. While Moody is slightly taller and has a sturdier frame, Quinones looks quicker laterally, making him a better option to defend down the positional spectrum.
Quinones probably fits better as a point-of-attack defender and is a slightly better 3-point shooter than Moody.
The other player Moody might have a case to supplant is Saric, whose minutes have also been crunched recently. The power forward has struggled of late, shooting 37.5% from the floor and 20% from deep in February. Although Saric has more size than Moody, he’s not a great rebounder.
Saric plays next to Jackson-Davis to provide floor spacing, but that goes out the window if he’s not making shots. Perhaps Moody could fill the same role as a small-ball power forward in the second unit, but those lineups would give up a lot of size. Plus, Paul’s return should help Saric given their two-man chemistry.
Or, if Saric thrives with Paul, Moody fits nicely as a wing with Saric as the lone big man. The Paul-Podziemski-Moody-Kuminga-Saric lineup is +19.3 points per 100 possessions in a small sample size. The same combination with Wiggins in for Kuminga has a similarly promising track record. That lineup construction has a good blend of spacing, playmaking and outside shooting.
There’s still no easy path for the Warriors to find more minutes for Moody. That won’t change as the Warriors push to escape the play-in round.
Moody is still only 21, as old as college seniors. But it must be tough for him to take what’s amounting to a third redshirt year.
“He’s out of the loop right now, but that doesn’t mean that’s the case for the rest of the season,” Kerr said. “We’ve got a lot of guys who are healthy, we’re getting Chris back… so everybody has got to stay ready.”
