The Warriors’ 11-game win streak is over.
Their not-as-publicized 26-game win streak without Kevin Durant or Stephen Curry in the lineup is over.
The Warriors season — of course — is not over.
But a loss like Saturday’s will make you question some things, for sure.
“We just didn’t have it,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after his team’s 96-81 home loss to the Denver Nuggets Saturday. “It’s a long season, it’s 82 games, and sometimes the ball doesn’t go in the hole… Hell of a streak — we flush this one down the toilet and we move on.”
The Warriors will be moving onto LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who come to Oracle Arena for a Christmas Day.
But before we can move on to that marquee showdown, an autopsy of Saturday’s performance — easily the Warriors’ worst of the season and the team’s worst offensive performance since March 2016 — must be conducted.
Here are the six biggest reasons the Nuggets beat the Warriors on Saturday:
Conditions were perfect
I’m not sure it would have been possible to concoct a better trap game for the Warriors than Saturday’s, which was:
* The back end of a back-to-back
* Amid a long win streak (complacency alert)
* Against a young team looking to prove something
* At a weird tip-off time, 5:30 (don’t underestimate the importance of body clocks)
* Amid the holiday season
• At home (while it’s tough traveling during the Christmas season, there are fewer distractions when you’re out of the house — at least for some)
* The last game before a huge, marquee, circled-before-the-season-started matchup with their arch-rivals
But other than all of that, it was a normal game…
This isn’t to take anything away from the Nuggets — they handed it to the Warriors on Saturday — but Golden State looked all sorts of off.
“[I] Didn’t feel like we were into it emotionally tonight. It wasn’t there,” Kerr said. “I just didn’t see a lot of joy… I didn’t see a lot of excitement about playing. We weren’t having much fun.”
Some of that had to do with Denver’s tactics — more on that later. A lot more had to do with Golden State’s focus and energy level.
But above all that, there was also another huge factor at play:
3-point variance is real and it can be cruel
The Warriors are one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the NBA.
Frankly, at this point, that should go without saying, but that truth needs to be re-established after Saturday’s performance.
“Our 3-point shooting is one of our strengths. Tonight it wasn’t there,” Kerr said.
The Warriors made three 3-pointers Saturday.
Three. Total. In an entire game.
Seriously, here they all are:
Draymond Green made a 3-pointer on the Warriors first possession of Saturday’s game.
It wasn’t until the 1:51 mark of the third quarter that the Warriors’ second 3-pointer of the game ripped through the net.
Klay Thompson added a third in the fourth quarter.
That’s it. That’s everything.
Saturday’s game was the worst 3-point shooting performance in the Steve Kerr era and only the fourth time in the franchise’s history when they’ve attempted more than 25 3-pointers and made less than 15 percent of those attempts.
To sum it all up: Woof.
Three-point shooting is notoriously fickle. Per a UC San Diego – Microsoft report (I know…), the 3-point shot has twice the variance of a 2-point field goal attempt.
I doubt Charles Barkley cared about that stat when he claimed that the Warriors couldn’t win a title a few years ago (and the year after that), but he was echoing that point (without actually knowing it).
The Warriors — the greatest 3-point shooting team in NBA history — bucked the belief that 3-point shooting teams can’t win titles.
But just because they’re trailblazers of the deep shot doesn’t mean that they’re not subject to the natural variance of shooting from distance.
Few could have seen a performance like Saturday’s coming, but down games are to be expected from time-to-time.
It’s merely the collateral damage of shooting that many 3-pointers.
And there was shrapnel all over the floor Saturday.
Klay Thompson had his worst game of the season
There’s no nice way to put this: Klay Thompson sucked Saturday.
Of course, Klay Thompson is also one of the best basketball players on the planet, so there’s no reason to think Saturday’s game means anything.
Still, it was rough.
The Warriors’ bad 3-point shooting was a team problem, but no one exemplified that woefulness more than Thompson, who was 1-of-10 from behind the arc and only 6-of-21 from the field Saturday.
With Stephen Curry out of the lineup, the Warriors have needed Thompson to provide more offense; and save for Saturday, he has done that.
But when he struggles, other members of the Warriors needed to step up, and no one did.
The Nuggets had an excellent game plan
Kevin Durant wasn’t bad on Saturday, but he wasn’t good either.
And that kind of a “meh” game wasn’t good enough for Golden State with Thompson’s struggles.
Denver deserves a lot of credit for that.
Durant has frequently been the Warriors’ primary ball handler in Curry’s absence, and I thought the Nuggets did a great job of pressuring him off the dribble, forcing him into tougher-than-usual shots and some unforced errors.
Durant only had three turnovers Saturday, but he wasn’t impacting the game as he has over the last few contests, a byproduct of a poor night from behind the arc (the Nuggets didn’t have to respect him as much from distance) and frequent double teams as he came into the lane (which weren’t followed by incisive passes from either Durant or his teammates).
Denver hardly gave the rest of the NBA a blueprint for how the beat the Warriors, but Michael Malone’s plan to slow Durant down and his player’s energy in executing that plan was laudable.
Draymond Green looked a step behind
In the fourth quarter of Saturday’s game, Green tried, as he has so many times before in his career, to will the Warriors to a victory.
He couldn’t do it.
He was just a step behind all game Saturday, just as he was on Friday, his first game back from a two-week absence.
I’ve often wondered what would happen when Green — who uses his insane basketball IQ more so than a preternatural athletic ability to be the all-world player he is — loses a step.
Friday and Saturday, seeing him work off the rust from his time off, I think I have a better idea.
Green was by no means atrocious, but he didn’t impact the game the way we so often see from him.
These two turnovers feel indicative of Green’s night.
Green will get back up to full speed — that’s a Dieter Kurtenbach Guarantee™️ — but it was a bit jarring to see him a bit behind.
And, if you’re keeping score, that means the Warriors had less-than-ideal performances from Golden State’s three best players Saturday.
Some else was going to have to step up on the offensive end…
Nick Young was nowhere to be found
Nick Young’s poor performance wasn’t why the Warriors lost Saturday’s game, but it was a factor.
Saturday’s game was calling out for Young to make an impact. Thompson, Durant, and Green weren’t playing up to their standards, Andre Iguodala was still under the weather (he had the flu this week) and the team’s offense was a slog, becoming more and more constipated in the half-court as 3-point shots didn’t fall and less-and-less confident transition after things like this:
Yes, this game was begging for Nick Young.
And he was nowhere to be found.
Young was lost on both sides of the court on from the start of Saturday’s game and he never recovered.
3 guys had to tell Nick Young the play
— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) December 24, 2017
The Warriors signed Young for nights like Saturday’s — games where the team just needed someone to inject some offense from the bench.
Young wasn’t able to fulfill his role Saturday, and one has to wonder if he did if the final score would have been different.
