The Warriors still have a championship core, but as a whole, the roster has spent the first three months of the 2022-23 NBA season searching for an identity.
The habits built during their NBA Finals run last June are gone and have to be relocated. So far, this year's team hasn't been able to stack good games together. They haven't found any consistency, and through 47 games, they are 23-24, in 10th place in the Western Conference entering Monday's slate of games.
It looked as though the Warriors had figured something out over the last week, with a win over the Washington Wizards, a hard-fought overtime loss to the Boston Celtics and an impressive short-handed win over the Cleveland Cavaliers.
But the Warriors took a step back with a brutal 120-116 loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday night at Chase Center.
After the game, a frustrated Steph Curry didn't mince words about the current state of the team.
"Losing sucks, no matter what the reason is," Curry told reporters. "Losing is a terrible feeling and we hate it. Being 23-24 past the halfway mark of the season, we've experienced a lot of it, so we need to bottle it up and do something about it. Feel like no one is letting go of the rope, nobody's thinking we can't do it. Again, that's our challenge to not be in the situation we're in where every other night, we're explaining why we couldn't get the job done."
On several occasions this season, the Warriors have shown the fight and resolve they exuded during their NBA title runs, but they haven't been able to sustain it. The latest indication that they have what it takes to defend their championship came Thursday in Boston when they almost beat the Celtics in a Finals rematch.
The next night, without Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala, the Warriors managed to beat the Cavs, who didn't have Donovan Mitchell. Still, it was an impressive two-game stretch that garnered attention.
Golden State Warriors
But for all the progress they made in the final two games of a five-game road trip, they flushed it all away with a loss to the Kevin Durant-less Nets on Sunday night.
For as good as Curry-led teams have been over the last decade, he knows this is a different team with new pieces who are trying to gel and build chemistry. Still, the inconsistency is hard to explain.
"I'm not sure, I just know, every year, you have to prove you're a good team and it's not just because we did what we did last year or the year before, we finished down the stretch, went 15-5 those last 20 games or what did in years past," Curry told reporters. "Every year, you have to prove you're a good team and everybody has to take that accountability to do what it takes to accomplish that or else you have an empty season and nobody's happy. So, yeah, if we don't do it, we're going to prove we're not a very good team and I don't think anybody is signing up for that or going to let that be the result of the season."
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Curry and the Warriors have 35 games left to figure things out. They don't like losing, but if they don't start winning games, they won't be in a good position entering the playoffs, making it nearly impossible to properly defend their crown.