OAKLAND — The Warriors might have the best record in the NBA and a two-game lead for the top seed in the Western Conference playoffs, but they’re in a bit of a rut at the moment. There’s some negative energy creeping around the team.
And negative energy has the nasty habit of snowballing.
That said, this recent bit of poor play from the Warriors understandable. You could even say it’s expected. After three straight trips to the NBA Finals and hundreds of games where opponents are going full bore, the Warriors are, as coach Steve Kerr put it last week, “fried”.
The Warriors’ 1-2 record on road trip last week highlighted that point.
Now, the Warriors know the antidote: some time away from each other and the grind of the regular season. Sure enough, one is right around the corner — the NBA All-Star break starts next Thursday and will give the Warriors six much-needed days off.
But there are still five games to play before the team can get a much-needed vacation, and those games are going to challenge the Warriors.
In fact, I’d say this upcoming stretch of games leading into the All-Star break is the most important of the Warriors’ increasingly trivial regular season.
This week, in particular, could shape the trajectory of the Warriors’ final 24 games of the year.
This week, the Warriors will host two top Western Conference rivals, the Thunder and Spurs. It would sure be good to see a team that’s “limping to the finish line to the All-Star break” show some energy against both squads, if only to remind us (and themselves) that they can turn the screws on any team in the NBA.
We need a bit of reminding, after all. In a season that’s been defined by disillusionment, the last three games have proven to be the most disillusioned stretch of Warriors basketball yet. It’s foolhardy to overstate the importance of three games, but I think it’s fair to say that Golden State needs to prove that’s not the team’s new norm starting against the Thunder — who blew out the Warriors in the teams’ prior meeting this season — on Tuesday.
The Warriors’ disillusionment is, again, understandable. Golden State might get up for a big game against Boston, but when you’ve won three straight titles, it’s hard to pretend like a February game in Sacramento or the second game of a back-to-back in Denver means anything.
We’ve seen the Warriors turn it on a few times this season: Cleveland, Houston, and the Celtics have proven capable of grabbing Golden State’s attention. The Thunder and Spurs need to spark the Warriors to turn it up again this week.
Not because the Thunder and Spurs are worthy adversaries to the Warriors (though I still believe that Oklahoma City provides a strong playoff-series matchup challenge to Golden State), but because the Warriors can’t drag this negative energy into the All-Star break.
“We want to go into the break with a good vibe, no matter how much guys are looking forward to it,” Stephen Curry said Monday.
But to do that: “Our energy needs to be great, our attention to detail and boxing out, taking care of the basketball — stuff we talk about all the time, but those two in particular — we can kind of focus in and hone in on those two things and put together a nice little stretch of games, and wins.
The Warriors’ losses to the Jazz and Nuggets last week (as well as their underserved win against the Kings) are easy to write off —they didn’t change our perception about this Warriors team at all.
The Warriors will play the Mavericks (14th in the Western Conference) and Suns (13th) over the next five games as well, and losses to either (or both) teams wouldn’t change things either, though they certainly would raise an eyebrow.
After all, the Warriors have played loads of lackluster basketball against lackluster opponents this season. And again, it’s hard to chastise them for that.
But if the Warriors roll over last week’s poor play and turn in sub-par performances — or, more importantly, sub-par efforts — against Oklahoma City and San Antonio this week, then we’ll have something to talk about. And no, it won’t be positive.
The Warriors have received a lot of leeway this season, for all the reasons aforementioned, but they’re yet to turn in a dud performance in a game they should be geared up and ready to play.
And while, frankly, there aren’t many of those kinds of games on the Warriors’ schedule, they have two this week and this juncture of the season is the worst week to start a new trend.
For what it’s worth, Kerr, who is saying all the right things when describing how he’s navigating this peculiar season, is fully aware of the importance of this pre-break stretch.
And he’s not alone in spreading his message:
“Draymond [Green] talked about this, the other day, with the team — let’s go into the break in a good fashion. That will make the break even more fun, get rejuvenated and we’ll really come back strong.”
“I think that the excuse that we had last week is no longer an excuse,” Kerr said. “We’re going to be in our own beds the next week. We have great teams coming in. We should feel like this is a week that we can take advantage of.”
Do just that, and we can all go back to looking forward to April. (Ok, May…)
Fail to do so, and the No. 1 seed is back on the line and the final 24 games of what was a perfunctory regular season take on some actual weight.
