Warriors’ frustration grows as pedigree has not turned into wins
Steph Curry said he remains "mostly optimistic" about who the team can be. But will they ever actually figure it out?
DENVER — Frustration is mounting for the Warriors as they’ve spent most of this season stuck in the mud, fighting and failing to free themselves.
The Warriors remain “mostly optimistic,” according to All-Star starter Stephen Curry, that they can contend for a championship. He pointed to flashes of dominance the team has shown in spurts throughout the season.
But shortly after the Warriors suffered another loss Thursday night to boot them back down to .500 for the 14th time this season, Curry admitted to being “very well” aware of the building pressure to put together a win streak to climb up the Western Conference standings. Kevon Looney also expressed discontent with where the team is at with only 30 games left.
“It’s really frustrating,” Looney said. “It’s hard for us to put good wins together back-to-back. Every time we get a little bit momentum, we take a couple steps back so it’s frustrating but we try to stay positive.
“We know we got the talent to win, we know we can compete with anybody, we just got to go out there and do it every night and be consistent. We’ve been struggling with our consistency. We know what it takes, we know the formula, we’ve just got to go out there and execute.”
There have been talks of going on a run or figuring “it” out for weeks now, but the Warriors haven’t made up much ground. Instead, they’re trapped in a maddening maze. Every time they appear to turn a corner, maybe starting to finally feel good about where they’re heading, they smack into a reality check.
That’s what happened on their most recent trip.
The Warriors, finally healthy, opened the three-game roadie by winning their third straight game, fending off Oklahoma City after the Thunder cut a 21-point second-half deficit down to a one-possession game twice in the fourth. That had Klay Thompson feeling like “big nights are on the horizon.”
Just two nights later, though, the Warriors would go on to squander a double-figure lead in the second half, losing in overtime to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who were without Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert. The next night, they had a valiant effort against the West-leading Denver Nuggets, but again, couldn’t get the job done.
That left the Warriors back in a familiar spot: 26-26 with few answers for why a team featuring 11 NBA champions can’t regularly put together complete performances.
The up-and-down nature of this season leaves plenty of questions looming over the underperforming defending champions especially as the trade deadline nears.
The most pertinent one now, though, surrounds the durability of Draymond Green.
Green emerged as a late scratch Thursday night after tightness in his right calf flared up during warmups. A similar discomfort last season grew into a back injury that sidelined him for nearly two months.
Coach Steve Kerr tried his best to ease some concern, saying the team believed Green’s injury to be “something minor.” Green is expected to undergo further evaluation back in the Bay before Saturday’s game.
The loss of Green, the team’s motor and defensive anchor, would be detrimental to the cause.
Fortunately for the Warriors, not a whole lot of the Western Conference is stringing together consistent wins. Entering Friday night, only 1.5 games separated fourth place from ninth, where the Warriors found themselves after losing to the Nuggets. But Golden State is also only 1.5 games ahead of the Thunder in 13th place, three spots out of the play-in tournament.
Kerr has tried to tweak his rotation to address the unsteady play, spacing out Green and Looney’s minutes. That meant making Jordan Poole a starter again, a role he usually thrives in more than coming off the bench.
The smaller-ball grouping of Curry, Thompson, Poole, Andrew Wiggins and Green has started only five of the last eight games together thanks to the need to rest veterans. That group has defensive and rebounding deficiencies due to its lack of size. Wiggins would be a key to solve the rebounding issue, but he has struggled since an injury and subsequent illnesses made him miss a career-high 15 consecutive games in December.
In the meantime, Curry said it will take a collective effort to break through.
“Everybody, including vets, the core needs to play better and more consistently,” Curry said. “Some of the other questions around our rotations and our defensive mindset and just our focus on that front, we have to address that and continue to hold ourselves accountable. But if everybody raised their level of play just a little bit, that’s why I’m optimistic because I feel like we can do that.”
But how tough will it be to actually put these words into action?
“We’ll find out,” Curry said.