CHICAGO — The Warriors could provide few answers for why they’ve consistently struggled on the road after their latest ugly showing away from the Bay.
“I wish I had the answer for you,” Draymond Green said after the Bulls handed the Warriors a 132-118 loss to kick them back below .500 on the season. “It’s ringing in my head probably the same way it’s ringing in yours. I don’t know.”
But there’s been one noticeable trend with this struggling Golden State team beyond the frustrating turnovers and defensive mishaps.
“There has to be a sense of urgency, right? But I don’t think we’re playing that way,” Green said. “You hope that a sense of urgency is there, and you play like a team that has something to prove, and that wants to get better and (is) embracing the process of getting better.”
The Warriors have put on strong showings at home and were also coming off a dominant blowout win over the Spurs Friday night in front of a record-setting crowd in San Antonio. But Green thinks the team needs to play with more desperation on a consistent basis.
“If you don’t have a consistent sense of urgency in this league you’re going to lose. If you’re good enough, then you’ll be a .500 team without the sense of urgency,” Green said. “So that’s where we are, like we’re good enough with no sense of urgency so we sit around .500.”
How do they channel that sense of urgency?
“That’s what we got to figure out,” Green said.
But even with so many question marks surrounding this inconsistent Warriors team, Klay Thompson said he had “zero” level of concern for the defending champs, who are 21-22 on the season and in eighth place in the Western Conference standings.
“Just get us there healthy in one piece, hopefully with a decent seed,” Thompson said.
Sure, the Warriors deserve some benefit of the doubt. They have four guys in the locker room who’ve won four championships, another who has won three and all but four on the team have glitzy rings for winning an NBA title.
But Stephen Curry acknowledged that the Warriors can’t just cruise through the regular season before turning it up a notch in the playoffs.
“We always say every year presents a different challenge,” Curry said. “Last year we started 18-2 and then we had some rough patches but at least we had a segment of the season where we could say we had figured it out. We might’ve had a game or two but we have not had a stretch where we consistently can … say we figured it out.”
The Warriors displayed some of their bad, ugly habits Sunday afternoon. Too many turnovers, not enough stops. Have you heard this story before?
Any time the Warriors seemed to pick up some momentum, they found ways to extinguish it. They were sloppy with the ball, turning it over more times in the first quarter (six) than the entire first half of their blowout win over the Spurs Friday (five.) Golden State committed 23 turnovers, which the Bulls, who were without DeMar DeRozan, turned into 31 points. The home team also took 12 more shots than the Warriors.
Defensively, the Warriors were out of sorts. Nikola Vucevic gave Golden State trouble all night on his way to finishing with a career-best 43 points on 18 of 21 shooting and 5 of 10 from 3-point land. The Bulls big man also grabbed 13 rebounds and had four assists to help Chicago snap a three-game losing skid and earn its first win over the Warriors since 2017.
“We’re just having trouble just stacking together good decision after good decision because that’s what this game is about on both ends,” coach Steve Kerr said. “Can you execute offensively without turning the ball over, and then can you execute defensively over and over again? You’re always talking about stringing together three stops in a row … We’re just not solid enough right now to be able to do that.”
Thompson suggested a lack of focus could be part of the Warriors’ problem. But he’s not sure why the team allows that to be an issue on the road, where it is 4-17.
“I don’t know,” Thompson said. “It’s hard, man. It’s a hard business.”
Even still, Thompson’s belief in this team remains high. He said there’s nothing to be worried about with the Warriors at this point.
“I’ve been in the league for a long time, I have all the confidence in the world in this team. I’m not going to be concerned,” he said. “I know we’ll right the ship, I know it in my heart.”
The Warriors will have a quick turnaround, playing in Washington D.C. Monday, less than 24 hours after the final horn in Chicago.
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