LOS ANGELES -- Steph Curry wasn't merely disappointed addressing the media Friday night after a 122-101 blowout loss to the Los Angeles Lakers ended the Warriors' season in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals. In his own words, he was "shell-shocked."
The Warriors found themselves in rare territory, losing their first playoff series to a Western Conference opponent under coach Steve Kerr. They lost all three of their road games to the Lakers, snapping a streak of winning at least one road game in 28 straight playoff series. And it all came down to a franchise known for catching fire going ice cold from the field.
The Lakers made their first six shots, and though the Warriors clawed back a handful of times, Golden State never held a lead once. Though the Warriors attempted 28 more shots than the Lakers, they made the exact same amount of shots (39). The Warriors clanked their way to 37.9-percent shooting and made a lowly 27.1 percent of their 48 3-point shots.
Curry and Klay Thompson, perhaps the game's two very best at watching the ball sink through the net, each missed 10 threes. The two combined to go 6 of 26 beyond the arc. Curry only made four of his 14 attempts, and Thompson was just as off, going 2 of 12 and 3 of 19 overall.
But the focus quickly shifted to what comes next for the Warriors and what got in the way of their latest title defense. Kerr tried to stay positive when asked where things went wrong in the Warriors' turbulent season. His message also seeped with reality.
"I think I'm more focused on what went right," Kerr said. "To be honest with you, the way the season started, we were disjointed and to have that 0-5 road trip, it felt like we were swimming upstream from the beginning. I think we found ourselves down the stretch and in the first round of the playoffs, and to be fair, I think the team probably, ultimately, maxed out."
Those final two words of Kerr's assessment are the two that caught the most attention. Five words earlier in his breakdown are equally as important, if not more important.
Golden State Warriors
During Curry's postgame press conference, I asked him about "swimming upstream from the beginning" and which factors led to the constant obstacles on the Warriors' road to repeating.
"I mean, you can probably fill in the blank there," Curry said. "From training camp until now, it's just the reality we're living in and trying to keep things positive and optimistic around what we were trying to accomplish this year."
An offseason of jubilation and celebrations didn't last long. Two-and-a-half months after beating the Boston Celtics in the Warriors' 104th game of the season to hoist the Larry O'Brien trophy yet again, they were in Japan playing the Washington Wizards for a pair of preseason games. The trip was seen as a rousing success.
Vibes were where they're supposed to be after winning a ring. The Warriors' championship culture was praised and on display. But everything comes to an end, and for this group, the energy was sapped from the start.
There was no hiding from Draymond Green punching Jordan Poole in training camp, no matter how badly the Warriors wished the problem could be cloaked and go away as if it never happened. The franchise was livid at video leaking of Green's punch, and the visuals certainly made matters worse.
An awkward tension never left the building, beginning with Green being a part of a ring night being overshadowed in controversy. The team's play on the court didn't help either. The Warriors' first road game was a 29-point loss to the Phoenix Suns. Their first road trip was a rotten egg of five straight losses to the Charlotte Hornets, Detroit Pistons, Miami Heat, Orlando Magic and New Orleans Pelicans.
Truth be told, the Warriors were trying to climb out of a daunting hole well before that. Their roster construction didn't do them any favors with management being on one planet, and Kerr appearing to be on another -- one that has brought the Warriors historic success in the past.
Otto Porter Jr. and Gary Payton II were free-agent casualties that couldn't be replicated by the Warriors' youth movement. Both were severely missed, and while the Warriors righted a wrong in bringing Payton back at the NBA trade deadline, his absence sure was felt the first five-plus months of the season.
Juan Toscano-Anderson's toughness and locker-room presence was gone. It's safe to say the Warriors could have used Damion Lee's 44.5-percent shooting from deep. Stylistically, even Nemanja Bjelica's skill set wasn't replaced and Andre Iguodala's final season was a failure on the court.
Many other barriers popped up along the way for the Warriors. Most were out of their control, however, an ugly tone was set coming off an offseason full of reveling in proving doubters wrong.
"We were one of the last eight teams," Curry said. "That's not a moral victory, at all. It's just understanding that in Game 6 of the conference semifinals you had a chance to push it to the end.
"There's a lot of pride in what we accomplished, but there's also an understanding that this is not good enough and we have to be a lot better next year and start re-establishing ourselves as a legit championship contender, because we weren't this year."
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A season ago, the Warriors started off 18-2 through their first 20 games. Along the way there were plenty of rough patches. The group persisted, battled, stepped up for each other and gave hopes of another championship parade.
This season, the Warriors were 10-10 through their first 20 games. They were exactly who they showed us to be: A middling team who can still dream of Curry taking them to the promised land. The Warriors were dominant in the comfort of their own home and terrible away from it. For the majority of the season, they were a .500 team balancing a goal of winning it all again while fighting to avoid the play-in tournament.
More than one person will have to stare long and hard in the mirror in coming to terms with what re-establishing themselves as legit championship contenders means and looks like, inside and outside, mentally and physically.
From start to finish, the defending champions were swimming upstream, and their season fittingly came to a crashing end while the current washed the Warriors away into the offseason.