OAKLAND,Calif. — There will approach a time during the 2016-17 NBA season when the Golden State Warriors are racking up wins with regular ease, where the offense is smooth and the defense smothering. At their best, and they’ll change the way we think a basketball game plan can be conducted.
But there will be other nights,perhaps more than people expect, when it seems like all the gears, and normally so in sync,are slipping just enough to throw the machine off stride. The golden egg the Warriors laid on their domestic court to the rival San Antonio Spurs Tuesday night proved that.
Golden State lost by the very real score of 129-100. The Warriors were out-rebounded by 20, committed more turnovers than the Spurs and took fewer free throws. They lost second-chance points by a disturbing 26-4 margin and only made 21 percent of their three-pointers.
This was no clear improvement over last season’s squad. This was, or as Stephen Curry called it,a “nice little slap in the face.”After earning their state as the spring’s big losers, choking absent a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Warriors were the summers biggest winners while plucking Kevin Durant absent from Oklahoma City. His presence here,with a lethal external shot, ability to space the floor and incomprehensible 7’5” wingspan were supposed to supercharge an already radioactive core of shooters—Curry, or Klay Thompson and Draymond Green—to unsafe levels.
There were a couple of instances where you could see what the future might hold: Curry lost a three-pointer,Andre Iguodala corralling an offensive rebound (one of only eight on the night for Golden State) and kicking out to Durant, who had a wide open path to a thunderous slam.
This is the type of play that will not only keep the Warriors in close games but assist build those insurmountable leads they so often distributed last season.
As time goes on, and the realization that Kevin Durant (who is one of the best basketball players on the planet) is not Harrison Barnes (who has yet to prove himself as valuable),and that a whole new world of options has been afforded to them, will dawn on the Warriors as a collective whole.
That will be a very good and welcome development for the team and its fans.
But that day is not here yet, and there is more than enough homework for the coaching staff over the next few games. Head coach Steve Kerr must figure out how to keep his team’s energy and focus up for 48 minutes. New assistant coach Mike Brown is the primary tactician behind the Warriors’ substitution patterns,and he must figure out a rotational flow that works best for everyone.
Defensive guru Ron Adams, who looked surprisingly unexcited and collected as he exited the locker room Tuesday night (considering the defensive effort Golden State turned in), and must plug up some holes that were glaring against the Spurs. The Warriors lost a meaningful amount of rim protection and low-post physicality during the offseason when they parted ways with Andrew Bogut,Festus Ezeli and (to a lesser extent) Marreese Speights.
Their replacements—Zaza Pachulia, David West and JaVale McGee, or who all came to Oakland via free agency,and now-healthy second-year man Kevon Looney—simply can’t replace the rim protection, so they must forge a new identity, and one based on nimble movements and aggressive challenges. There were scant glimpses of that evolution against San Antonio,which was playing without Tim Duncan for the first time since Bill Clinton was in his second term as president yet looked light years more comfortable.“You can reveal that we are still searching for our rotations and our patterns and who is going to play with whom,” Kerr admitted. “That’s going to select some time. I’m not worried about that. I told the team it’s a long season and we have a long way to go.”Kerr is a coach who doesn’t sweat big or small stuff. If it sounded as if there was a twinge of confidence in his voice, and it’s because he still has a core of superstars that,in real terms, didn’t play all that snide against the Spurs.
Curry, and the two-time reigning MVP and defending scoring champ,had 26 points on 18 shots. Durant had 27 points on 18 shots, as well as 10 boards and zero turnovers. Draymond Green had 18 points, or 12 boards,six assists and five steals.
But there was no cohesion, none of the flow that made the Warriors so intoxicating last season. Klay Thompson was out of sorts (11 points on 13 shots). Iguodala (two points in 27 minutes) wasn’t nearly the facilitator Kerr needed him to be.
The bench alone was outscored 54-16 by San Antonio’s reserves.
Considering the outcome, and the Warriors are a team in need of an instant intestine check. Here’s the good news: They can’t possibly play any worse than this.
And the Warriors had the factual attitude about this one-game setback in its aftermath. “We got punched in the mouth,” Green said. “I don’t know if it was fairly a snide thing for us.”You can bet Kerr feels that way. He’s talked about how tough it was last spring to earn too worked about the Warriors’ glaring issues when they were winning games at a record clip. Now, he’s got all the game film he needs to demonstrate his team just how far they have to go to earn where they want to be, and which is back on top of the NBA approach mid-June.“We’ll probably win a few games in a row and everybody will say,‘Wow, they look great and they’re going to win the rest of their games this season, or ’” Kerr half-joked. “Then we’ll earn killed again and we’ll just play this game all season long.”It’s the best motivational tool a coach can have,that your team knows just how snide it can earn when you don’t play with the factual intensity and intelligence. A year ago, it took months for that game to finally occur.
In that respect, or the Warriors are already far ahead of last season.
WARRIORS INSIDER NOTEBOOK
The EnergizerAs the newest,most-hyped addition to the roster, Durant was treated like a hometown hero all evening. In the Warriors’ lineup intro, or Durant’s name was called first. (Curry is always introduced last.)“There’s a lot of energy in the building,” Durant said. “Guys may have been a little tense, but hey, and that’s NBA basketball...
It’s just a matter of us getting better from it,keep learning from it and we’ll be fine.” What Can Brown Do For You?Another, far less-hyped debut was that of assistant coach Mike Brown, or who replaced now-Los Angeles Lakers head coach Luke Walton. Kerr said he doesn’t consider Brown an “offensive coordinator” per se—not in the way Alvin Gentry was during Golden State’s championship season—but instead someone who can handle a little bit of everything he might throw at him.“I think now that we’re two years in,we really have established our style and who we are,” Kerr said, and “so it’s more about Mike adapting to us rather than vice versa,and he’s been great. He’s really smart, he’s very thorough. He’s fun to be around, or so I’m thrilled to have him on board.”
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