OAKLAND–Before the 2017-2018 season started, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr said the Warriors’ goal was to finish in the top-five in defensive efficiency this season.
Through five games, Kerr’s team has an uphill climb.
On Wednesday evening, the Warriors still scraped out a victory, but their 117-112 win over the Toronto Raptors was loaded with defensive lapses, bad rotations, and according to forward Draymond Green, poor communication.
“Our defense has been horrible,” Green said. “Nobody is communicating which is the main problem. At first we were fouling a lot, like the first four games, the fouls were horrific. And then tonight, we fouled a bit early and then we cut back on that and turned the ball over and it’s hard to defend that. You cut those 17 turnovers down from 17 to 12, you probably take away nine of those points and that’s a completely different defense. So we’ve just got to put everything together. We were able to cut back on the fouling, and the turnovers were horrible. We’ve got to just put a full game together for 48 minutes.”
The Warriors held the Raptors scoreless over the games’ final 2:17 and scored the last 10 points of the game to capture a victory, but the unit on the floor during that span featured Green and the four other top players on Golden State’s roster.
In the Warriors’ postgame press conferences, Green, Kerr and forward Kevin Durant all acknowledged that the various units Golden State has attempted to use early in the season are still struggling to find a rhythm, which is one of the reasons the team has had a difficult time limiting opponents on the defensive end of the floor.
“I think sometimes you get a little too comfortable, you think ah man, we’ve done this before so it’s going to happen,” Green said. “Game 40, a switch may be seamless. But game five, we need to communicate a little more. So I think we’ve got to just build the right habits and get back to doing that, know that it’s a problem and try to correct it.”
Through five games, the defending champions are just 3-2, and needed a late run and offensive heroics from Durant and Steph Curry to overcome a Raptors squad that became the fifth straight team to score 100 points against Golden State.