Warriors Get Back on Track With Win in New Orleans

After back-to-back ugly losses to open the season, many in the media and online were quick to count the Golden State Warriors out. The dynasty was determined to be over after two games and Stephen Curry’s legacy was even being questioned. It’s as if people were saying that the Warriors were going to go 0-82 this season.

But the Warriors were finally able to break through in the win column with a 134-123 win over the New Orleans Pelicans that wasn’t as close as the score suggests. While the team still has plenty of work to do, it’s clear that many were a little quick to spell doom for the season, a fact that Curry called out after the game.

“Everybody loves to label you when you're down, when you're losing,” he said. “It's easy to go on TV and say whatever you want. It's easy to throw darts at a team trying to figure it out...Say whatever you want to fill that 24-hour news cycle. It's cool with us.”

At various times during the game, we saw the Warriors play the way a good team can play.

Yes, it came against a winless Pelicans team missing Jrue Holiday, Derrick Favors and Zion Williamson. But the Warriors still did a lot of things that we didn’t see them do in the previous two games. They shot above 40% from the field and above 36% from three-point range, each of which was a first on the season. Curry, Draymond Green and D’Angelo Russell all had their best games of the season so far, with Curry scoring 26 points and adding 11 assists, Green picking up his first triple-double of the year and Russell posting a stat line of 24 points, seven rebounds and eight assists. The role players stepped up as well. After some struggles in his opening two NBA games, Jordan Poole handled himself nicely in his first career start, scoring 13 points and going 3 for 5 on threes. Eric Paschall and Omari Spellman were the game’s primary big men and they delivered, combining for 16 points and 10 boards. Glenn Robinson III picked up 12 points and nine rebounds. But in the most unexpected performance of the night, Damion Lee came off the bench to drop 23 points on 8 of 14 shooting while grabbing 11 rebounds as well. Now in his second year as a two-way player for the Warriors, Lee has shown himself to be a capable performer on an NBA court and may well earn a full-scale NBA contract at some point in the near future. Unsurprisingly, all of this led to the Warriors producing their best offensive game of the season.

But it wasn’t just the offense that stepped up. The defensive rotations were crisper. The players seemed to give more effort tracking players and closing out on the perimeter. Despite never putting a player taller than 6’9” on the court, the Warriors outrebounded the Pelicans 61-41 because they repeatedly crashed the glass with multiple bodies and seemed to put more passion into their rebounding. The result was the lowest opposing field-goal percentage and three-point field-goal percentage allowed by the Warriors this season, and while the 123 points allowed is still too much, it’s misleading in terms of how well the defense played. It just shows what can happen when a team puts in the necessary work on the defensive end.

To be clear, there is still a ton of work to be done. An easy win over one of the league’s coldest teams doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of the season. The defense is still a work in progress. The role players and young guys can’t be counted on to play every game the way they did against the Pelicans. There could be many more games like the ones against the Clippers and the Thunder.

But the players are aware of this. Draymond Green said so in blunt terms.

“We’re still not a very good team,” he said. “We have a lot of room for improvement. Just because we won one game doesn’t mean we don’t suck right now.”

But you can’t win multiple games without winning one game first. This game wasn’t just a victory. It was a confidence builder, an opportunity for the new players to grow and a chance to build chemistry by realizing what can happen when the team plays up to its potential. A win over the Pelicans doesn’t solve the season, but it’s a very good place to start.