LOS ANGELES — Stephen Curry is back, and Sunday in L.A. he was doing Stephen Curry things.
30 doing 30 things
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) March 5, 2023
pic.twitter.com/MOFSDZSJ5k
The confidence he exudes, his gravity and the way it warps defenses, and the 19 points he scored in the fourth quarter Sunday are all things the Warriors are going to need if they are going to defend their title.
“It’s great to have him back,” Steve Kerr said, stating the obvious. “He is who he is. He strikes fear in our opponents and opens up a lot of things for his teammates.”
That was not enough Sunday as the Warriors’ road woes continued — they are now 7-24 on the season away from the Chase Center.
A LeBron-less Lakers team jumped on a sloppy Warriors team early to get up 15 in the first, got 39 points from Anthony Davis, and held off Golden State comebacks to win 113-105. It was a quality Lakers win as they fight to make the postseason (or at least stay in that mix) while LeBron James is sitting on the bench with his foot in a boot.
39 points
— NBA (@NBA) March 5, 2023
8 rebounds
6 assists
Anthony Davis showed OUT in the Lakers W 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/Rl7egqPjvr
The Warriors are destined for the playoffs — they sit as the No. 5 seed even after the loss — and to a man they talk about a focus on flipping the switch and finding their championship form again.
That switch was not flipped Sunday, and the loss showed the Warriors have a lot of work to do to get to that level of execution consistently.
There were stretches Sunday that the Warriors could hang their hat on, but adding Curry and Andre Iguodala into the lineup is not plug-and-play. It showed. For every good stretch of Warriors ball, there was a stretch of sloppy play that gave the Lakers opportunities and Los Angeles played well and took advantage.
“It’s a tough transition for everybody with me and Andre coming back,” Curry said. “Guys [are] just trying to find their rhythm or keep their rhythm, keep their confidence. And all that’s our challenge as a team.”
While Golden State wants to focus on itself and not the standings, it’s still watching the standings and the implications that come with them.
“It’s weird to say it, like we’re trying to win championships but we’re also trying to stay out to play-in, too,” Curry said. “So both can be true just based on what our challenge has been this year.”
That challenge has been shifting lineups and rotations all season long. The Warriors lost Otto Porter and Gary Payton II over the summer (Payton returned in a trade but is injured), James Wiseman didn’t find a fit and has been traded, Moses Moody is gone, and on top of that Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and others have battled injury.
All that instability took its toll on the Golden State defense, which was 21st in the NBA heading into the All-Star break.
Then, over their five-game winning streak coming into Sunday, the Warriors played the best defense in the NBA with a defensive rating of 100.6 — basically giving up just a point per possession.
Against the Lakers the road woes continued and that defensive rating jumped to 115.3 for the game (via Cleaning the Glass), which would be bottom 10 in the league for the season. Kerr, however, wasn’t mad about that end of the court.
“I thought we’ve defended them pretty well. They shot 44%, they made 11 threes, yeah, that’s usually enough [for us] to win,” Kerr said. “So I wasn’t disappointed in our defense at all, other than a few coverage mistakes. So it was our offense that we needed to execute a little bit better.”
Defense and road wins have been a core part of the identity of the four Warriors title teams, but this year’s squad has fallen short on those fronts. Those are the areas they need to improve in March because they will need them to advance in a wide-open West playoffs. The spotty execution on Sunday begs the question of if they can get there.
But they got Stephen Curry back, and that’s a step in the right direction.