OAKLAND — Perplexing is the right word to describe the Warriors’ 129-100 opening night blowout loss to the San Antonio Spurs.
One by one, Steve Kerr, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Steph Curry walked to the podium, pointed the finger directly at themselves, said all the right things, assured us this thing will take time.
And while there is no alarm bell going off at Oracle Arena, there is a hole lot of confusion going on in the Bay Area. How could the most anticipated NBA team in a generation allow a rival to spank them at home to start the season?
Tuesday was a vicious awakening and a reminder that the most important person to the Golden State’s success this season isn’t Durant or Curry. It’s not the Warriors’ tedious big man situation or their refurbished bench. One person has the answers to the test.
It’s Steve Kerr. It’s him figuring out how to play an entirely new board game. It’s the Warriors evolving from a three-point snipe-shooting group of youngsters to a mature, well-oiled machine who can use four superstars to mask their glaring flaws.
Kerr has done this before. He tinkered with Andre Iguodala coming off the bench in 2014, he uncovered Draymond Green almost by accident after David Lee’s injury. He turned Mo Speights into a shooting specialist. Is Steph Curry really Steph Curry without Steve Kerr? We’ll never know.
The point is that Kerr has sprinkled his mastermind dust on this basketball team before and will need to again for the Warriors to conquer the immense expectations laid out before them. It may take a minimum of a month to cobble together a new identity. Because, obviously, this Warriors team cannot show up to the gym and expect their shooting can make up for a lack of rebounding and post play. That can’t be the end game.
Gregg Popovich walked into Oracle Arena with a potential formula to cause Kerr and his players some real growing pains to start the year off. The Spurs attacked the rim like their lives depended on it, out-rebounding the Warriors by 19. Drawing fouls all night, Kawhi Leonard made all 15 of his free throws and scored a career-high 35 points. Once the Warriors started missing three-point shots in the second quarter, they went into scramble mode. But instead of feeding off the frenzy like they had in years past, the Warriors had further mental lapses on defense. An 18-point halftime deficit ballooned into fans streaming the exits with eight minutes still on the clock.
Sure, this version of the Warriors was going to lose more than nine games in 2016-17. Key players were willing to concede that fact all throughout the summer and the preseason. Kerr has said he’s going to rest players a lot more this time around. They should not be overreacting.
That’s the one concerning part from game No. 1. Last year’s Warriors didn’t lose at home until April. They never lost a home game by more than seven points. They were always hungry, never quick to go in the fetal position like what we saw on Tuesday. Or, once in a blue moon, when they’d find themselves down by 20 points, they’d always find a way to come roaring back and step on the neck of their opponents.
Maybe that’s actually the point of this column: last year was last year. Kerr’s 2016-17 Warriors look like an entirely different species. All of us, including him, are still trying to figure this team out. Here’s what I see:
For starters, Zaza Pachulia is very stiff and cannot be treated as Andrew Bogut 2.0 (despite that hilarious behind the back pass in the second quarter). Pachulia will play better than this, he will have some big moments throughout an 82 game season. But as we found out on Tuesday, he can hurt the team significantly if he’s not on. The 2 points and 3 rebounds was a really bad look. OKC’s Steven Adams and Enes Kanter await next Thursday.
The bench is missing a player who can come in and score in large spurts, a role assumed by both Leandro Barbosa and Speights last season. Andre Iguodala did nothing to stand out — especially defensively — and has never been known for scoring. Ian Clark was surprisingly the second player off the bench in the first quarter and missed all four of his three-pointers. Shaun Livingston might have to assume more of a scoring role while Iguodala handles the rock with the second-unit.
Durant is still an excellent isolation player, hitting a few of his patented baseline leaners after holding the rock for several seconds. There has to be a way to work this in more naturally, because it can be a main source of offense for the Warriors when Klay Thompson is cold and the Spurs are chasing Curry off the three-point line.
And how about the much-hyped ultimate death lineup, you know, with Durant replacing Harrison Barnes? They entered for the first time together down 14 points and went into halftime trailing by 18.
We have 81 more games to learn about the Golden State Warriors. The regular season could still end up being a cakewalk for them.
How quickly that happens is in the hands of Steve Kerr.
