OKLAHOMA CITY — After yet another Golden State Warriors meltdown Friday night, guard Stephen Curry struggled to offer a remedy for his team’s late-game issues.
“I don’t know, man,” he said. “Got to figure out how to stop talking about it and do it. Or else you’ll be into the new year with the same problems. … I’m kind of sick of talking about it.”
The exhaustion in Curry’s voice was telling. He has played at an MVP level, only for an inconsistent supporting cast to plunge the Warriors two games below .500 more than a quarter of the way through the season.
Urgency is mounting. On three occasions during his six-minute postgame news conference Friday, Curry mentioned that Jan. 1 marker. Fifteen seasons into a Hall of Fame career, he has come to recognize an important reality: If an NBA team isn’t good by New Year’s Day, it probably just isn’t very good.
It doesn’t matter that an All-Star-laden roster and championship pedigree suggest that the Warriors should be title contenders. If they don’t turn things around quickly, they could stare down their third lottery trip in five years.
As Curry put it, “You can’t let too much of the early part of the season go by without getting some kind of safety net in the standings” because “you don’t want to be chasing come the new year and into February.”
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This puts considerable pressure on the Warriors’ next three weeks. In that span, seven of their 10 games are against teams that would make the playoffs if the season ended Saturday — a troubling stat given that all 12 of their losses have come against franchises currently in the playoff picture.
If the Warriors go, say, 3-7 the rest of December, they would enter the new year 13-19. Under that scenario, general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. might have to make some difficult decisions.
This season’s predominant theme has been maximizing what’s left of Curry’s peak years. Should the Warriors need a shakeup, Dunleavy has limited options. Perhaps he trades Chris Paul or Klay Thompson, both of whom are on expiring deals, to rebuilding teams for younger players. Perhaps Dunleavy unloads Andrew Wiggins’ massive contract to clear more minutes for Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody.
Over the season’s first 6½ weeks, head coach Steve Kerr has been stuck in a sort of limbo between the elder statesmen and the next generation. The Warriors’ aging core, aside from Curry, has underwhelmed. But even though Kuminga, Moody and rookie Brandin Podziemski warrant bigger roles, Kerr feels like he must stay loyal to the players who helped make Golden State a dynasty.
That could soon change. Twenty-two games provide a large enough sample size to glean vital trends, and almost every advanced analytic reinforces just how much better Kuminga has been this season than Wiggins.
By posting 37 points on 16-for-27 shooting (3-for-6 from 3-point range), 13 rebounds and plenty of highlights in 46 minutes over the past two games, Kuminga might have finally earned expanded playing time night to night. But regardless of what Kerr does with the rotation, the Warriors must start limiting mistakes.
Since last season, Kerr has pleaded for his team to cut down on fouls and turnovers, only for Golden State to still rank toward the bottom of the league in both categories. Such nagging issues have thrust the Warriors to the brink of an identity crisis.
“I watched this same group win a championship a year and a half ago,” Kerr said. “They’re champions, but they’re not playing like it. I’m not coaching like it. We have to figure this out.”
In the immediate aftermath Friday of their third late-game collapse in 10 days, the Warriors tried to stay optimistic. Golden State has been firmly in control for significant portions of many games against top competition.
Just look at Friday. The Warriors seized a 14-point lead over the Thunder midway through the second quarter before piling up giveaways, committing costly fouls and losing in overtime.
“The fact that we had 29 turnovers and still had a chance to win the game is nuts,” said Green, whose team has the NBA’s fourth-easiest schedule the rest of the season. “It shows that if we can clean that up, how good this team can be. I’m confident that we will clean it up.”
The narrative around these Warriors would be far different if they had just hung onto big leads recently against the Kings, Clippers and Thunder (twice). In that sense, the NBA doesn’t allow much separation between a 10-12 team and a 14-8 team.
But even though the Warriors have taken the glass-half-full approach, they understand that this season has already reached a critical juncture. Just last season, Golden State had a better record through 22 games (12-10), only to narrowly avoid the play-in tournament before exiting the playoffs in the second round.
Now, with young teams like Minnesota (17-4), Oklahoma City (14-7), Sacramento (12-8) and Houston (10-9) ahead of schedule, the Warriors sit 11th in the Western Conference standings. Only they can prove that time hasn’t passed them by.
Hence that exhaustion in Curry’s voice Friday. Jan 1. was just 24 days away.
“Right now, it’s just about winning games,” Curry said. “It’s hard enough to win on a nightly basis, let alone try to make a late-season charge with that kind of pressure. Every game is important right now.”