Pace of play is a factor far too often overlooked in the NBA. Teams play at different speeds, taking particular amounts of time to possess the ball and attempt shots. If one team plays at their tempo and prevents the other team from doing so, they give themselves a massive advantage. It isn’t talked about much when discussing wins and losses, but it can be incredibly important.

The rate of the action showed its importance at a particularly high level in the Warriors’ 100-79 loss to the Sacramento Kings on Sunday night. The Kings entered the game as the NBA’s slowest-paced team, while the Warriors found themselves placed in the middle of the pack. Against the Warriors, Sacramento stuck to that grinding style of play, trusting that they’d be able to score efficiently with fewer possessions while preventing the Warriors from doing the same. They were absolutely correct in their prediction. They shot 60.3% from the field while the Warriors shot just 39%.

The Warriors had a few bursts of strong scoring, but only a few. After taking too many jumpers in the first quarter, they began attacking inside in the second to positive results, trimming the deficit to four points. But the Kings tightened up their defense and kept making their shots. The Warriors did neither. Despite playing well for most of the second quarter, their deficit actually increased from eight points in the first quarter to nine at halftime. 

Neither the offense nor the defense played well enough to give the team a chance at a win. On the defensive side of things, too many of Sacramento’s 22 three-point attempts were uncontested. Golden State defenders frequently found themselves in no man’s land, too far away from drivers to truly be playing help defense but too close to them to have time to close out on the Kings’ perimeter shooters. More experienced teams, such as Warrior rosters of the past, do not make mistakes like this. They couldn’t string together enough complete defensive possessions to take the Kings out of their rhythm.

The one thing the Warriors did incredibly well on defense was their forcing of turnovers. The Kings committed 29 of them, and most of those can be attributed to the Warriors making good defensive plays. Willie Cauley-Stein and Damion Lee led the way, with Cauley-Stein racking up six steals and Lee drawing three offensive fouls. The Warriors created turnovers in a wide variety of ways thanks to quick hands, effort and anticipation. The problem was that when they weren’t forcing turnovers, they didn’t get many stops. On those possessions when the Kings were actually able to get a shot up, the Warriors didn’t do a good enough job moving and contesting.

The Warriors also turned the ball over a lot themselves, racking up 21 giveaways. However, there were two big differences between the turnovers committed by the two teams. Most of the Kings turnovers were simply a byproduct of good Warrior defense. Most of the Warriors turnovers were a byproduct of the Warriors making stupid decisions. As the Warriors threw ill-advised pass after ill-advised pass, they took vital shooting and scoring opportunities away from themselves. You can’t score if you don’t attempt shots, and the Warriors failed to put up shot attempts far too often thanks to self-inflicted errors. The second major difference is what the two teams managed to do when they did take shots. As previously mentioned, the Kings scored with efficiency. The Warriors, on the other hand, clanked jumper after jumper. The only placed where they managed to succeed in scoring was in the paint, where they put up 44 points. But when the Kings managed to tighten up their interior defense, the Warriors never had a response. Cauley-Stein was the only Golden State player to score with both quantity and efficiency and no one got going from the perimeter for any meaningful stretch of time.

It’s a trend all too familiar for the Warriors at this point: solid on one side of the floor, outright bad on the other. The team is posting a frustrating lack of complete games — and unsurprisingly, it’s leading to losses.