The Warriors had a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s game at Indiana only to let it slip away, eventually falling to an injury-ravaged Pacers team that picked up its first win of the season. With six minutes left, Golden State was up 104-93; the team only scored five points the rest of the game while giving up 21.
Two-time MVP Stephen Curry placed the blame on himself for the loss, according to Anthony Slater of ESPN (Twitter video link). The star guard had 24 points in 29 minutes, but shot just 8-of-23 from the field, had five turnovers and only two assists (zero rebounds), and was a game-worst minus-21.
“This is one of those look in the mirror (type games),” said Curry. “There are parts of the game where I made it too hard on all of us, with not getting getting organized, bad possessions, a little lack of energy.”
After a 4-1 start, the Warriors have dropped two straight games (the first was a loss to the Bucks playing without Giannis Antetokounmpo). Jimmy Butler expressed confidence the team’s momentum hasn’t slipped away, as Slater relays.
“We haven’t lost any momentum, we just haven’t been playing our best version of basketball,” said Butler, who recorded 20 points, seven assists, six rebounds, three steals and two blocks on Saturday. “It’s easy to get back to that — taking care of the ball, not fouling, rebounding, sharing, making shots. That’s easy. Like you said, it’s only seven games. Everybody’s still on this bus and doing what we’re supposed to be doing together.”
Here’s more on the Warriors:
- Head coach Steve Kerr was frustrated after Saturday’s loss, per Slater (Twitter video link). “It feels like we just gave away two games,” Kerr said. “ … We have to find a way to be sharper. There’s always tough nights during the season. This should not have been one of them. We had the day off yesterday. We didn’t shoot around today. We had plenty of rest. But execution down the stretch was awful. And it’s a shame because our young guys played their a—- off to get us the 11-point lead. Gui (Santos), Moses (Moody), (Brandin Podziemski), those guys were fantastic.”
- As Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star writes (subscriber link), Trayce Jackson-Davis has been out of Golden State’s rotation to open the season, but the third-year center says he’ll be ready to produce when called upon. “It’s not necessarily that I need to show anything,” Jackson-Davis said Saturday morning at an optional shoot around. “But I need to go in and play with high energy. Rebound at a high level and run the floor. Do things of that nature. I think that’s what I bring to our team. We have a lot of older guys on our team, there will be guys who sit out back-to-backs, so when I get a chance I have to do those things and build on it from there.”
- In an interview with Mark Medina of EssentiallySports, Dutch big man Quinten Post discusses his offseason, his expectations for his second season, learning from Al Horford, and more.
face it warrior fans Curry is starting to show his age. He is not as active as he has been on the floor this year. The warriors defense been missing the last 2 games. Kerr’s stubborness of not playing Post more minutes hurt the team. When Post was on the floor last night the easy drives to the basket closed up.
Last week you were ready to name them champs
You got the wrong person who claimed that. I have never said they were going to be champ. I been saying that its going to be tough enough to be top 6 in the west.
And don’t forget I was the one reiterating all summer we can’t take Dubs as serious title contenders unless The Chef has another bonafide superstar scorer alongside him. The only difference between then and now is I’d keep Moody and send out Hield as the third rotation piece to go with Kuminga and Draymond for Giannis. I probably won’t say “told you so” if and when it happens, arc89. Dubs are in position to do something major. Dream big – that’s all I ask.
Lamo …….
This loss was all on Steph and Dray, who had 2 key turnovers in the last 6 minutes and Dray with only 1 ast and 3 TOs for the game. And Kerr just watched 2-way Quenton Jackson score 12 pts on 5 shots (4-4 in the last 6 minutes to fuel the 16 pt turnaround in that timeframe.
Kerr needs to start gameplanning around JK as the lead option instead of automatically going with heroball from steph as his one and only plan.
kerr was out coached. By the time he adjusted it was almost the 4th quarter. He then got out coached in the last 2 minutes.
Kerr’s contract extension is less likely everyday
@arc89
Kerr got outcoached by putting Steph and Dray in with 6:26 remaining, and again when he put in Horford for Santos at 5:06 left, and then when Curry missed the fta with 3:06 left he should have benched him for Will Richard, who didn’t even play the entire game. Or Hield, Moody, or Santos – any of them might have helped.
Like in all sports teams adjust so they saw a hole in the warriors defense and took advantage of driving inside. The lack of a big enforcer in the middle will cost the warriors this season. Almost every good team has one.
JK’s role to finish the gm at every gm is get out of the way and stand in the corner. :(
> Kerr needs to start gameplanning around JK as
> the lead option instead of automatically going
> Vwith heroball from steph as his one and only plan.
This is the the most important discussion. I don’t believe JK has to be the “lead” option over Steph, but Kerr has to gameplan to fall back to JK when it’s not working with Steph. As you point out, both Steph and Kerr are forcing Steph to do more when he’s struggling, and it goes from bad to worse.
Early in the second half, while Steph was struggling, JK was getting to the cup at will because the Pacers had so little interior defense on the floor. But Kerr preferred to run plays exclusively for Steph instead of taking advantage of what was working.
Using JK as a facilitator on offense has worked well, but now Kerr should use him more often to take pressure off Steph.
It’s early. Warriors will adjust and continue their best playing…
They beat good teams, but played poorly against bad teams. Seems the players need to get their heads right if they want to go further this season. Curry can’t be turning the ball over 5 times a game.
Yea it’s curry’s fault. Waive him! False humility is dumb.
Portland also beat Denver in a close game. Can portland beat them again when it matters? People shouldn’t put too much on these regular season games, coz portland & indiana are young & upcoming teams, they can beat you if you are caught off guard.
The Warriors are an old team and it is going to show in a 82 game season. Their main goal should be to get a top 6 playoff seed with their old guys as healthy as possible. People who live and die with every Warriors regular season win or loss in the hope they can challenge for a top 2 seed are delusional.
Not gonna act like I know Warriors. But they need a lead guard. A PG for their system. Handle the ball and start the offense. Curry and Jimmy aren’t there for that. I thought Podz was the guy. A young Payton was doing that. Melton can do that. Kuminga can bring the ball up. You rather see him off the ball. They don’t have a lead guard imo