After three consecutive troubling performances against inferior opponents, the Warriors spent most of Friday night trending toward a fourth such act, this time against a team considerably worse than the previous three.
The New Orleans Pelicans, 20-53, missing four starters and already seated on the bullet train to the NBA draft lottery, put up all the fight the Warriors could take before Golden State, finally, in the fourth quarter, responded like a team in a playoff race.
The Warriors needed every bit of their 15-point fourth-quarter advantage to slip out of Smoothie King Center with a 111-95 victory that left them still searching for satisfaction.
“I thought we stuck with it,” Draymond Green told reporters in New Orleans. “Got off to a slow start, and then once we found our footing we kind of found our rhythm. And in the second half, it really started to feel like us.
“Not great. It can get a lot better. But I love the way we closed the game.”
Golden State through three quarters managed only a one-point lead (83-82) over New Orleans’ backups before finding their bearings in the fourth quarter as the Pelicans ran aground in ways the Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat – the previous two opponents – did not.
The Warriors are so deep in their own quicksand they’re hoping those 12 good minutes, against a team with no business threatening them, are enough to pull them out.
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“I thought we played fine,” coach Steve Kerr said. “I didn’t love the passing, especially in the first half, but we took care of the ball better in the second half. We missed some wide-open shooters in the first half and didn’t pass them the ball. That disrupted our rhythm and kind of messed with the game a little bit.
“But overall, I thought we got really good shots. The second half was much better with the ball movement, the flow, and the defense was good.”
That this was such a grind demonstrates that the Warriors, even with the return of Stephen Curry, offered little to signify they have solved the issues that have nagged them since their last satisfying win, March 18 over the Milwaukee Bucks.
Golden State once again fell behind early. Shot poorly. Had the kind of defensive lapses that would be fatal against a quality team. There was, until the fourth quarter, a relative absence of the desperation necessary to have any chance of finishing the regular season among the top six teams in the Western Conference.
The loss Tuesday in Miami pushed the Warriors into seventh place, back into the Play-In Tournament box for the first time since the first week of March. Finishing seventh or lower would send a team built around advanced veterans – who would benefit from recovery time before the postseason – plunging immediately into the Play-In Tournament.
Curry, who scored 23 points in his return after missing two games, explained the team’s desire to climb back into the top six in the West.
“It’s extremely important,” he said. “You guarantee a series, and you get a week off. Nobody wants to be in the Play-In if you can control the outcome.”
Sixth place is a pipe dream for the Warriors if they shoot 41.3 percent from the field, including 23.6 percent from distance, as they did against the Pelicans. Or if they allow a team to shoot 68 percent from beyond the arc, as the Heat did three days ago. Or if they allow a team to shoot 57 percent from the field, as the Hawks did last week.
While the Warriors were spending three quarters chasing their heels in New Orleans, their closest competitors, the Los Angeles Clippers, were laying a 132-100 roasting on the sub-mediocre Brooklyn Nets. The only team to beat Los Angeles in the last two weeks is first-place Oklahoma City.
This is the point of the season when teams in the playoff race are supposed to be sharpening their edge, blasting lesser opponents and saving their best for those in the same fight. Los Angeles is trending up. The Warriors, 3-3 over their last six games, are trending sideways.
“The last two games, Atlanta and Miami, there were stretches where we were the more aggressive team and more physical,” Curry said. “We got back in the games, even though offensively, we were struggling.
“If we could just keep that energy and that spirit about us, you have to believe the shots will fall at a higher rate. And then that’s when the dam can open and (we can get back to) the basketball we were playing during that 16-2 stretch.”
Next on the schedule are the Spurs, the last of five consecutive opponents with losing records. If the final 12 minutes in New Orleans are some kind of remedy, it will be apparent in the first 12 minutes Sunday in San Antonio.
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