The Warriors’ postseason ride begins Sunday down a certifiably bumpy road under adverse conditions, Stephen Curry and his achy shooting hand leading them in against a Los Angeles Clippers squad that has owned them this season and now is greatly enhanced.
Which is as it should be. The first 48 minutes of a high-stakes journey tends to expose a team’s heart and mind, and the Warriors need plenty of both to get where they want to go.
“Good teams find a way to win big games,” Curry told reporters in Portland on Friday after a 103-86 win over the Trail Blazers. “That’s what we’re aiming to be.”
It begins with Curry and the offense. The formidable attributes of Jimmy Butler III notwithstanding, Curry is the shepherd of this flock. Golden State’s offense at its best makes defenses dizzy with artful passing and improvised motion that generate open shots. Coach Steve Kerr, with an assist from former assistant Alvin Gentry, devised this “organized chaos” almost 11 years ago to take advantage of Curry’s gravity as well as his spectacular shooting.
When the Warriors operate as designed, it’s beautiful. They are harder to defend than a lie to your mother. When they don’t, they become, well, what they’ve too often been over recent weeks. A team that needs superb defense to offset merely satisfactory offense.
“We could be a lot better (offensively),” Draymond Green conceded to reporters in Portland on Friday. “It’s been too up-and-down as of late, the ball sticking a bit, not moving enough. But defensively, I think we’ve been pretty good for the most part for the most part.”
Curry offered zero disagreement.
“Defensively we’ve been a very consistent team, and our numbers show it,” he said. “Offensively, we’ve been kind of hit or miss.”
Solid defense and average offense likely won’t be enough to conquer the Clippers on Sunday and it surely won’t be enough to provide an extended stay on the NBA playoff calendar. The Warriors are sixth in defensive rating and 15th in offensive rating.
Golden State is seventh in offensive rating since the All-Star break but only 15th over its last 15 games. The defense is third over that span. More telling is that the Warriors have topped their standard of 30 assists only twice since in those 15 games. They’ve recorded 25 or fewer assists four times during that span and failed to reach 100 points three times.
“There’s no rhythm,” Green said. “If the ball is sticking and it’s not moving when it’s supposed to move, you’re not getting the ball when you’re supposed to get the ball. It throws off the rhythm and timing of the game.”
Brandin Podziemski, the second-year guard who has evolved into a primary ballhandler, averaged 3.5 assists over the last 15 games. Fourth-year forward Mose Moody, who handles the ball less frequently, averaging 1.9 per game. Butler averaged 5.9 assists and Green 4.9. Curry, who sometimes plays as much off the ball as much as on it, averaged 5.5.
Rarely does a game go by that the Warriors don’t commit at least one shot-clock turnover. Those tend to be a direct result of the ball sticking instead of moving. Podziemski, a less-than-ideal isolation player, occasionally has lapses of overdribbling. Butler sometimes holds the ball waiting for a cutter that doesn’t always come. Curry fights a tendency to telegraph risky passes. Green sometimes overpasses or fails to realize that most of his teammates are slow to recognize what he sees.
The result is an offense that stalls nearly as often as it percolates.
“The game’s got to flow,” Kerr said. “We have to pass the ball better. We have to get spaced better. We have to develop a rhythm. We were in a better place, I think, a few weeks ago. We were playing with more rhythm, more flow, more two-way connection. We have to get back to that. The last couple weeks have been a little choppy.
In the 11 games beginning with the March 22 loss to the Hawks in Atlanta, the Warriors are 15th in offensive rating and seventh among teams in the West. They are sixth in defensive rating, third in the West. This is not championship stuff. It’s not the stuff of a deep playoff run.
It’s not exactly crushing it down the stretch, either.
The Warriors won’t practice Saturday, but they’ll conduct a walk-through before the 12:30 p.m. tipoff against the Clippers. Can they fix their offense in a day?
Should the Warriors prevail, can they add polish during the six days before Game 1 of the first round?
“That’s what we need to figure out,” Green said. “Steve always says, just hit the first open man. If you see somebody open, hit him. And we’re not doing a great job of that right now. We’ve got to figure out why.”
Whether the Warriors land in the play-in tournament or avoid it and proceed directly to the playoffs, their postseason fate depends on it.
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