Long before the Warriors’ 6-0 undefeated preseason, their blistering 12-3 start to the regular season and their 6-15 tumble down the standings since, a look at the schedule showed when the hard part was going to begin.
After the Warriors blew an 18-point lead in an eight-point loss to the Brooklyn Nets back on Nov. 25, coach Steve Kerr did his damndest to focus on the present while acknowledging his team’s upcoming stretch of games was going to be “daunting.” There were no favors the rest of the calendar year.
The Warriors then lost their next three games and won only four more the rest of 2024. Flipping the pages to 2025 was supposed to be a relief, and at first, it was. Feeling the good vibes of the new year, the Warriors played their best game in weeks by blowing out the Philadelphia 76ers, 139-105. They withstood the Ja Morant-less Memphis Grizzlies without Steph Curry for another strong victory, giving them their first win streak in more than a month.
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There wouldn’t be a three-game win streak. The last two games, losses to teams without the opponent’s best player in embarrassing fashion for numerous reasons have brought the Warriors to a new low.
Now they begin a four-game road trip with a .500 record at 18-18, good for ninth in the Western Conference, against four teams that looked to be easily winnable games not too long ago. But at this point, what are reasonable expectations for the Warriors’ longest road trip since the start of November?
“We can’t be frontrunners,” Trayce Jackson-Davis said after the Warriors’ 114-98 loss against the Miami Heat on Tuesday night. “We got to dig in. We got to find our soul. That’s what Draymond kind of said. It was our soul we’ve lost. We lost our spirit. We got to get that back.
“We got to play tough basketball. We got to play with confidence.”
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No spirit. No soul. Shots might start falling, or they might keep clanking out. Either way, starting Thursday against the Detroit Pistons, every player and every coach has to look within. That’s the only way the Warriors are going to get back to even being a formidable team, first in Detroit and then the next night in Indiana against the Pacers, ahead of playing the Raptors in Toronto on Monday and ending the trip in Minnesota to play the Timberwolves on Wednesday.
Coming into the Warriors’ slate away from San Francisco, the Pistons now have won five straight games. The Pacers have won four straight, the eight-win Raptors have dropped two in a row and have one win in their last 15 games, and the Timberwolves are on a two-game win streak after losing three straight.
The 19-18 Pistons now have one more win than the Warriors this season. They’re no longer a scheduled win, and Cade Cunningham has grown into a legitimate franchise superstar. The Pistons will be on the second night of a back-to-back, but Cunningham only had to play 23 minutes Wednesday night in a 15-point win over the Nets.
When the Warriors played the Pacers two days before Christmas, Curry was held to 10 points on 2-of-13 shooting. The Warriors’ leading scorer in a six-point loss was Jonathan Kuminga, who dropped 26 points off the bench, but won’t be back in action for at least three weeks. Tyrese Haliburton had a 16-point, 12-assist double-double for the Pacers. Myles Turner also had a double-double with 23 points and 10 rebounds, and Pascal Siakam added 20 points.
Curry, Green, Dennis Schroder and Moses Moody all came into Thursday questionable on the injury report, as Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski and Gary Payton II remain out due to injuries. Andrew Wiggins also was ruled out with a personal matter. Curry has been sitting one game of a back-to-back, so it’s nearly a guarantee he won’t suit up in one of Detroit or Indiana. The last back-to-back the Warriors had, Green sat the first game as both aging stars have to manage lingering injuries.
Starting the road trip with a win against the surging Pistons, whether they have Curry and Green or not, would be paramount to a Warriors confidence boost. They have to at least split their back-to-back before venturing north and crossing the Canadian border.
Would a loss to the top-pick-bound Raptors be a new low? In an 82-game season, there can be more than one way of hitting rock bottom. A shovel would be required if after two days off the Warriors lost to the Raptors. But Toronto’s young talent can turn it on and give Golden State yet another gut check.
That leaves just the Timberwolves, a team the Warriors already have played three times this season, going 2-1. Curry has averaged 28 points against the Timberwolves this season, and Anthony Edwards has averaged 25.3 points on 47.4 percent shooting and 43.3 percent on threes. Those two Team USA teammates will look to fill highlight reels and put on a show at Target Center.
And Green besting Rudy Gobert would have the Warriors’ team plane bopping on the way back to the Bay Area.
Any outcome from these next four games wouldn’t be surprising, aside from a clean sweep as the Warriors haven’t enjoyed a four-game win streak since the start of the season. Going 2-2 has to be the bare minimum. Adding three or more losses would have the Warriors spiraling into waters where they’ll sink before they can swim. But three wins would have them climbing up the standings and playing with confidence once again.
This team needs a trade in all the worst ways. This is the group they have for the time being, though, and finding their soul and spirit is the only way wins are going to become reality again.