Key threat to Warriors’ season hopes on display again late in loss to Heat originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
It’s rare that an NBA team missing three starters can compete on the road with a team nearly invincible at home when it spends much of the game shooting as if blindfolded, ponderously dribbling into traffic and throwing up air balls.
Yet the undermanned and profoundly defective Warriors were giving the Miami Heat all the smoke they could handle Wednesday, taking a 74-72 lead into the fourth quarter.
Then came a disastrous turnover spree that beckoned a richly deserved 110-96 loss.
Perhaps the most instructive element for the Warriors was that Jimmy Butler III, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Al Horford – veterans too often prone to distressing turnovers – all watched the fourth-quarter meltdown from the bench. They got an up-close look at a potential upset win spiral into a double-digit loss.
The Warriors gave the Heat 34 points off 23 turnovers, with 16 of those points coming off nine giveaways in the fourth quarter.
“I’m very, very confident that we will get that turned around,” coach Steve Kerr told reporters at Kaseya Center. “We got it turned around last year after we got Jimmy, cut our turnovers way back. That’s going to be the focus when we get home.”
The Warriors (9-8), who return to Chase Center on Friday and open a five-game homestand against the Portland Trail Blazers, closed their six-game road trip with a 3-3 record that under the circumstances leaves them somewhat satisfied but less than content.
No matter who is on the floor for the Warriors, though, turnovers continue to undo much of their best work. The math blatantly tells them that is the biggest of their problems. They’re undefeated (8-0) when they win or tie the turnover war, 1-8 when the lose it.
“We have to do a better job of this as coaches of giving the guys better spacing and cutting and teaching it better so that the decisions become easier,” Kerr said. “And then they’ve got to do a better job of just making simple decisions.”
Golden State had to be much smarter to overcome an offense in which only two players – Quinten Post (8 of 13 from the field, including 3 of 7 from deep) and Trayce Jackson-Davis (2 of 2) – shot better than 35 percent from the field. Buddy Hield was 7 of 20, 4 of 15 from distance. Brandin Podziemski was 6 of 19, 2 of 7 beyond the arc. Moses Moody was 3 of 12 from deep, while Gui Santos was 1 of 7, 1 of 6 from deep.
And, somehow, the Warriors still were in position to steal a victory. They played ferocious defense. They rebounded. They displayed enough grit and perseverance to offset their atrocious shooting, 36.2 percent from the field, including 26.5 percent beyond the arc.
But that formula trends sharply toward losing when giving your opponent 34 points off 23 turnovers. The Warriors were outscored by, hmm, 16 (38-22) in the fourth quarter.
Key threat to Warriors’ season hopes on display again late in loss to Heat“Turnovers got [the Heat] going,” conceded Pat Spencer, who came off the bench to contribute 11 points, a career-high 13 assists and only two turnovers.
After all these years, and what seems like relentless dialogue about Golden State’s tendency to play fast and loose with the basketball, fast and loose continues to drag them down more than anything else.
The Warriors dropped to 29th in the NBA in turnovers committed, averaging 17.1 per game. They bless their opponents with more gifts than the Washington Wizards or the Utah Jazz or the Charlotte Hornets.
At what point will the Warriors – from Curry, Butler and Green to the men on the far end of the bench – address this problem with the sincerity required to curb what plagues them?
The Warriors’ early season travel schedule has been the toughest in the NBA, 17 games over 29 days, with a league-high five back-to-back sets. It’s about to get easier, with eight of their next 12 games at Chase Center.
Maybe they’ll find a rhythm once they return home. But with the issue being as vexing as it typically is, seeing improvement is the only real fix.
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