Kelly Oubre Jr. lays another egg for Warriors, who have few alternatives and no margin for error

Oubre hasn't been anything close to the player he was in Phoenix last season

There are two ways you can look at the Golden State Warriors' 111-107 loss to the Boston Celtics Tuesday night. Either it was a positive that they were able to hang with an obviously good Boston team despite playing without a center for the entire second half. Or, if you're less inclined to take your tea from a half-full glass, you can say this was a game the Warriors actually should've won, and likely would've won if not for the all-too-familiar theme of Kelly Oubre Jr. laying an egg. 

In truth, the answer in somewhere in the middle. The Warriors had every chance to win this game almost entirely on the back of Stephen Curry, who finished with 38 points on seven 3-pointers, but they were also kind of lucky to be in it given the size deficit at which they were operating. 

With a sprained wrist sidelining James Wiseman and Kevon Looney missing the second half with a sprained ankle, the small-ball Warriors could've gotten blown out as Boston pounded them on the boards to the tune of a 51-26 differential, including 12 offensive rebounds that deflated way too many of Golden State's gritty defensive possessions. 

But they didn't get blown out. They fought. As usual. Truth be told, you haven't been able to question the competitiveness of the Warriors, in years when they've had the talent edge and years when they haven't alike, for the past nine years. That foundation of grit goes back to the Mark Jackson era. It was there again Tuesday night, and it's been there all season. 

As for Oubre, no one player is ever solely responsible for the outcome of a game. He does some good things every now and then. But there's really no way to skate around how detrimental he's been to the Warriors, and that was surely the case again on Tuesday despite a traditional box score that looks marginally acceptable for a supplementary scorer -- 12 points on 5-of-11 shooting. 

It's the non-traditional stats, which perfectly mirror the eye test, that tell the tale. Consider that the Warriors were outscored by 25 points in Oubre's 26 minutes on Tuesday. Do the math, and the Warriors, no matter who else was on the floor, outscored the Celtics by 21 points when Oubre was on the bench, but somehow lost the game by four. 

Single game plus-minus numbers are notoriously deceiving, but this is an extension of a now quarter-season sample size that is becoming impossible to ignore. Entering Tuesday, the Warriors were minus-6.1 per 100 possessions with Oubre on the floor, compared to plus-5.1 when he was on the bench, per Cleaning the Glass. 

Specifically, Oubre is killing Curry. It's almost impossible, in fact, to be as bad next to Curry, a plus-minus God, as Oubre has been this season. Entering Tuesday, When Curry has shared the court with Oubre, the Warriors have been outscored by seven points per 100 possessions. Take Oubre out -- which is to say leave Curry on the floor with any other four players -- and Golden State is winning those minutes by 16.2 points per 100 with an offensive rating of 128.7, which would by far rank as the best mark in the league. 

Oubre did the Warriors a favor by picking up his fourth foul early in the third quarter, which sent him to the bench, on a charge Kemba Walker could see coming a mile away:

To say Oubre lacks vision would be an understatement. When he's not running into stand-still defenders, he's at times literally running into his own teammates. The number of times he's wandered directly into Curry's off-ball path this season is startling. When he has the ball, apart from when he's shooting 3s that he's only making at a 22-percent clip, he only has eyes for the rim. 

The Warriors had 30 assists on Tuesday; Oubre had two of them, and that's up from his season average. He could have a skyscraper in front of him and, almost admirably, he would still try to do this every single time:

There's a casual perception that Oubre is a plus-defender, but that's actually not true. He's athletic and plays with energy, both of which draw your eye when it results in a flashy play, but truth be told, he is pretty weak at containing dribble penetration and he's hardly ever in the right spot ahead of time as a rotator. Even if you want to call his defense average, all things considered, it doesn't come close to making up for his offensive deficiencies so far. 

One of the redeeming elements of Oubre's game this season has been his athleticism, but even that he overuses, like an infielder with flashy hands who gets himself into trouble by trying to turn routine plays into one for the highlight reel. More times than not, it's the simple play that wins, and Oubre just can't help but try to dunk damn near every ball into the core of the earth instead of drawing contact for a foul or figuring out a more efficient finishing angle. 

Even when he has a wide-open lane he finds ways to shank finishes:

If these were exceptions, that would be one thing. Everyone misses a dunk/layup once in a while. Everyone gets their shot blocked. But the regularity with which Oubre blows point-blank scoring opportunities is astounding. 

Any time Oubre has looked halfway decent this season, he has immediately regressed back to his mean. He did it again on Tuesday, hitting his first four shots before missing six of his last seven. He was particularly backbreaking over the final seven minutes and change, missing pivotal 3s and fumbling passes in fueling the Boston run that would prove to be the difference despite Golden State's late rally. Here are the lowlights:

You might ask: Why do the Warriors keep playing Oubre so many minutes? Well, for starters, they're paying north of $80 million for his services this season, including taxes. Besides that, they're not exactly flush with alternatives. Juan Toscano-Anderson is an intriguing player who played terrific on Tuesday. Damion Lee is solid. Mychal Mulder can shoot. But you can't be doling out 30 extra minutes a night to those guys. Jordan Poole and Nico Mannion are in the G-League. And now Looney is likely out for the Warriors' upcoming road trip, which means they'll have to play exclusively small, which means a lot of Oubre. 

There have been rumors that Golden State could look to include Oubre in a trade, but that goes without saying at this point. The question is whether any other team would actually trade for Oubre. He is on an expiring contract, which could, perhaps, entice a partner somewhere in the league, but he's also the only player in the league to post four games so far this season in which he has shot 20 percent or worse from the field on 10 or more attempts. 

For now, the Warriors are simply hoping that Oubre can eventually become a consistently passable player in their system. It's a situation where every game matters, as the Warriors' margin for error is almost nonexistent this season if they want to make the playoffs. They're going to lose plenty of games as it is; they can't keep getting derailed by their own guy -- no less a guy who averaged 19 points and six rebounds last year for Phoenix on 35-percent 3-point shooting. You can say that version of Oubre was a good-stats-bad-team guy, but even if that was, or is, the case, he's clearly not this bad. When he's playing well, he's a good NBA player, and the ongoing hope is that he'll eventually find some consistency. 

But how long can that hope hold out?