The Golden State Warriors were never going to be good on defense this season. That was a conscious decision. Klay Thompson's injury deprived them of their best wing-defender. D'Angelo Russell was their only possible compensation in losing Kevin Durant, and Andre Iguodala's departure was the price of doing business. The hard cap prevented them from signing a defender with the mid-level exception and depleted their depth. As bad as it looks, Golden State allowing 261 points in its first two games was the expectation.
The path to relevance more or less relied on Golden State scoring 262 points during such stretches. If the Warriors could play top-five offense, all defensive sins could be forgiven. A week ago, that seemed feasible. Stephen Curry's mere presence practically ensured it. The Warriors have finished no lower than third in offense since Steve Kerr took over. Look at Curry's minutes only, and his teams posted an offensive rating that would have finished eighth or higher in every season of his career except his first. Curry, for most of his career, has been an elite offense unto himself.
For the first time on Sunday, that no longer appears to be the case. Golden State made only 32.6 percent of its field goals and 15.2 percent of its three-pointers in a 120-92 loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder that wasn't as close as the final score indicates. The Warriors were as bad as everyone expected defensively. What's so troubling here is that they might have been worse on offense.
Against the Thunder, they struggled in the most predictable manner possible. They lacked talent. Oklahoma City double-teamed Curry fairly often relying not only on the other Warriors to miss shots, but for Curry not to trust them enough to let them take them.
D'Angelo Russell didn't get quite the same treatment prior to his third-quarter ejection, but it wasn't far off either. The Thunder threw hard hedges at him to try to force passes.
Had that pass been caught, Steven Adams would have immediately jumped over to help at the basket. Doing so would have been unthinkable against previous Warriors teams, when that shooter in the corner might have been Klay Thompson instead of Omari Spellman. But the Warriors of the past half-decade forced those kinds of defensive compromises. Protect the basket and get shot into oblivion. Stay at home on shooters and it's death by 1,000 layups. You could lose to Golden State's talent, or you could lose to its system. Your call.
This year's Warriors have neither. The Thunder made the conscious choice to protect the basket, and in turn handed out open jumpers like candy. Golden State just missed them.
Glenn Robinson III shot 29 percent from behind the arc last season. Omari Spellman shot 34.4 percent on only 2.8 attempts per game. Those figures are bad enough to be left open, but better than the 15.2 percent mark from Sunday would indicate. Eventually, shots are going to go in. Maybe not at an elite clip, but often enough to keep the Golden State offense functioning. Bad shooting nights are an inevitability in the NBA.
Bad turnovers, though, are the result of bad offense. Golden State had some doozies against the Thunder. You may not see a worse inbounds pass than this one by Marquese Chriss this season.
Only two minutes later, multiple Warriors seemed to engage in a lively game of "the ball is lava."
Golden State's motion offense has always been somewhat susceptible to turnovers, but those turnovers were born of ambition. Moving the ball increases risk along with reward, so the trade-off was more than acceptable. These were not ambitious plays. They were not smart plays. They were just mistakes, mistakes borne out of inexperience. Golden State has one of the youngest rosters in the NBA. Most of their players have not played in this system. So far, they're struggling to fit within it.
Golden State lived off of the easy baskets its system generated during their championship years. They were bountiful because of how much attention teams had to pay to Curry, Thompson, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green. Shaun Livingston back-cuts were the best-case scenario for defenses, yes, but they also represented the sort of beautiful game Golden State wanted to play.
But right now, that game isn't possible. This roster doesn't know how to play that way yet, and the Warriors have had no choice but to become overly reliant on pick-and-rolls to compensate. Defenses are doubling their two ball-handlers with impunity as a result knowing that the rest of the roster can't make enough plays or shots to punish them for it.
As long as that continues, it won't matter how good Curry is. The Warriors won't be able to score at a high enough level to make up for their defense.
"The reality is we f---ing suck right now," Green said after the loss. Based on the reality of Thompson's injury, this roster's youth and the inflexibility imposed by the hard cap, the last two words of the sentence may need to be removed entirely.
