LOS ANGELES — Down five with 90 seconds left, trying to avoid the low point of a disastrous 10-game stretch, Steph Curry split a double-team, caved in the Lakers’ defense and found a wiiiiiiide open Klay Thompson on the right wing.
At every moment of Thompson’s history with the Warriors, this would qualify as good offense and a great result. But you could feel the uneasiness as Thompson caught, hesitated a split second longer than normal and then missed a clean look that could’ve swung the eventual 124-116 loss against the Lakers.
The Warriors are 2-8 in their past 10 games and 0-3 on this road trip that’ll end in Denver on Monday night without Curry, Thompson or Andrew Wiggins in attendance. Memphis has leaped them for the second seed and has the Rockets, Pelicans, Knicks, Thunder and Pacers the next five games. The Grizzlies have a chance to blast ahead of the Warriors in the coming week, and even Utah is only two back in the loss column.
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That would deliver the Warriors a more difficult first-round opponent and, even if they get through it, a likely second-round date with either the Grizzlies or even the Suns, without home court in either matchup.
“I could care less about seeding,” Curry said. “I just care about playing good basketball. … Right now, if the playoffs started tomorrow, we’d be in trouble.”
The ramifications of this deepening slump won’t be known until later. But, as Curry said, seeding really doesn’t matter if they don’t solve these problems. They are the third-worst team in the NBA since the middle of February, incapable of beating anyone four out of seven unless Draymond Green returns and other factors change.
Thompson’s struggles are the most uncomfortable of them at the moment. He missed two recent games because of illness and has returned with more rust than he even showed his first few weeks back after the 941-day layoff. Thompson went 6-of-17 in Dallas, was regularly beaten defensively and blamed the loss on himself afterward.
It went similarly against the Lakers. Thompson went 3-of-13, including that clutch miss, had four turnovers and was targeted by LeBron James several times on switches, something that so rarely happened to Thompson pre-injury.
“Klay’s pressing,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “He got into a pretty good groove over the month or so before the All-Star break, and I feel like the sickness, the illness that kept him out of a couple of games probably affected his conditioning and his timing. So, he struggled the last two games. He’ll get it back.”
“There are going to be ebbs and flows as he’s trying to find that consistency,” Curry said. “(We’ve) talked about letting the game come to him. But you don’t want to (make) him second-guess himself or (get) hesitant.”
Green is second in the team’s pecking order. He’s been out since early January. Thompson is third. He’s been in a funk during his battle to rediscover his pre-injury form. Wiggins is fourth. He’s been consistently quiet during this rough stretch. Wiggins hasn’t had a 20-point game since January and, after missing two free throws against the Lakers, is 9-of-23 from the line since the start of February — barely getting there and missing when he does.
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The Warriors went 9-of-19 at the line against the Lakers, giving away costly points in a close loss.
“Over the course of those 200 possessions (in a game),” Kerr said, “we’re making way too many mistakes.”
Jordan Poole scored 23 points in 32 minutes off the bench. He’s come alive again. Jonathan Kuminga made a batch of mistakes but finished with 18 points on 10 shots, even nailing a pair of big 3s. Moses Moody, who has leapfrogged Damion Lee in the rotation, made all four of his shots.
The youth was a bright spot. It’s the veterans who have become a growing problem. Lee and Nemanja Bjelica didn’t play against the Lakers. Bjelica is losing his grip on a rotation spot after months of ineffectiveness. Andre Iguodala has played only six minutes since Jan. 20. They need him back but could be in trouble if they are relying on 20 minutes a game from him in the playoffs.
Iguodala’s lack of availability was less of a problem when Otto Porter Jr. was giving the Warriors sharp, versatile bench punch on a game-to-game basis. But that Porter — like just about everything else with this team — began fizzling in February.
Porter made 21 of his 50 3s in 14 January games. He’s 4-of-21 since. But it isn’t only the shooting. Warriors players and staffers spent the first couple of months praising Porter’s instinctual defense and rugged rebounding, providing more than expected on the interior when the Warriors built the league’s best defense and led the league in rebound rate.
That’s no longer the case or at least hasn’t been recently. With Gary Payton II out because of minor knee soreness, Kerr started Porter against the Lakers, he said, to get more size and rebounding ability on the floor. But the Lakers, without playing a center the entire game, had 12 offensive rebounds against the Warriors.
Porter was beaten for three of them. Two are clipped below. In the first, Porter fails to stay physical with Russell Westbrook, who just slips right past him and bats out an extra (valuable) possession.
The second is one of the night’s more egregious, ill-timed errors from the Warriors. Keep your eye on the top of the screen. There is under four minutes left. The Warriors are up one. Malik Monk misses a 3. But Porter, guarding Carmelo Anthony in the corner, doesn’t even notice Anthony cutting past him on the baseline and getting in better rebounding position. It leads to an and-1 layup in crunch time. The Warriors can’t have this from their veterans.
Curry was asked about his level of concern regarding this recent 2-8 stretch. He was a bit more strong-worded than usual.
“(We’ve been) giving in to losing mentality,” Curry said. “We’re not that team. I’m not gonna let us be that team. We know — we’ve shown — who we are in terms of how we started the season. I feel like we can obviously get back to that. That’s the confidence that has to remain. But we cannot give in to this losing spirit of just finding different ways to lose basketball games. The clock will tick out on you and have you going into the summer thinking what could’ve been, should’ve been, having regrets. I don’t want to let us get into that vibe. We have 18 games left. We gotta figure out how to turn things around pretty quick.”
(Photo of LeBron James going to the basket: Kiyoshi Mio / USA Today)