Game 2 wasn't the first meltdown the Warriors have had this season

If you were surprised by the Warriors’ meltdown in game two against the Clippers, you have not been paying attention to this team.

This was without question the most egregious and on the biggest stage, but it was by no means the first sign of this problem. 

For the large part of this season and last, they have struggled under the weight of their own creation in more ways than one. 

The first sign of distress (this season) for the Dubs was the Nov. 12 game against the Clippers, but the first time the issues manifested themselves in a concerning way was in a 112-93 loss to a Kawhi-less Toronto in late November, when the Warriors were bum-rushed early and never found the interest to compete. One week later in Utah, the Warriors fell behind 11 in the fourth, crawled back into a one-possession game, but fumbled away several chances with contested threes, missed layups and a Curry turnover on an inbounds play. 

The trend of late-game instability continued. 

Dec. 27 at home against Portland (Warriors climb back to force OT, Curry turnover up two with 14 seconds left, Lillard wins it with six seconds), which helped launch an 18-3 stretch for Golden State. Feb. 13 at Portland, when the Warriors blew up in the fourth quarter after a string of technical and flagrant fouls gave the Blazers an eight-point possession and a 20-point win heading into the all-star break.

A two-few against Miami and Orlando in late February. A 33-point home loss to Boston. A home loss to Phoenix, the Warriors’ first defeat at the hands of the Suns in 19 games. A 35-point home loss to Dallas. A meltdown in Minnesota that manifested their war with the referees. 

They have existed week-to-week, game-to-game, second-to-second, relying on their ability to turn a game around in a split-second when need be.

They are serial procrastinators – they have bad habits because these habits have yet to bite them in the ass in a major way: Despite being one of the most consistently inconsistent teams in the NBA, they still secured the no. 1 seed in the West and won 57 games, many of which they won only because their late-game surges reaped victories.

Every wake-up call from a really bad loss only lasted for 15 games at most before their bad habits resurfaced in a big way.

This game was a perfect storm; the Warriors, still rung from DeMarcus Cousins’ thigh tear, lost focus and momentum and the ability to stop the pick-and-roll, and the relentless Clippers took full advantage. 

This is the make-up of the team, and thus is the firstmost problem with a team that has not only run roughshod over the NBA but haa changed the league in a way that every other team is, five years later, finally catching up to their style. 

The most jarring part of the loss was how quick the change happened. It was an avalanche. The Clippers scored 70 points (!) in the last 16.5 minutes of the game after scoring 63 in the first 31.5 minutes. They scored 31 in the last 7.5 of the third.

The irony of it is the Warriors created the conditions of this comeback themselves. 

Since Steve Kerr’s arrival in 2014, the Warriors have completely changed the way teams play and the league officiates.

In 2013-14, the highest scoring team posted 108 a game. 17 teams scored over 100, and the Bulls, who had the worst offense and best defense, scored 93.7 and allowed only 91.8. In the playoffs that season, only seven teams averaged over 100, and the champion Spurs scored 106.3 a game.

This season, the Bucks led the league with 118 points per game, and no team averaged less than 103.5. 22 of the 30 teams in the NBA score more than the Clippers’ league-high in 2013-14 and – this is the epicenter of it all – 23 teams shot more than the league-high that season of 87.5 field goal attempts per game. 

None of this is to mention the vaulting three-point shares, where we have all 30 teams averaging 25 threes this season when only four did so in 2013-14. 

The scoring has grown more and more each year, spearheaded by the Warriors’ small-ball dominance and three-point efficiency in their first two years of championship contention. The Warriors led the league in scoring every year from 2014-15 to 2017-18, and in that time the NBA went from having just over half of its teams averaging over 100 points per game to having all but two score in triple digits.

The “freedom of movement” rule instituted last summer has leveled NBA defenses this season and created the environment for 51-point quarters, record-breaking three-point shooting games and, sadly for the Warriors, 31-point playoff comebacks. 

That rule, and some of the other evolutions of allowing more offensive player movement off the ball, were in part born of most teams’ tendencies to do whatever they need to to defensively to keep Curry away from the ball and away from his sweet spot.

That strategy came to a head in the 2016 Finals, esp. in game 6, during which Curry fouled out on some touch fouls while he was being hounded on the other end, leading to his infamous mouthpiece launching incident. 

Mike D’antoni and James Harden have taken the revolution to its extremes, epitomizing the “live-by-the-three, die-by-the-three” mantra, creating one of the most explosive offenses in history and putting out a formula for how to maximize individual and team numbers, but the Warriors’ success taking and making more threes than anyone else in their first two years in the Steve Kerr-offense jumpstarted the offensive eruption. 

Once a jump-shooting team won a championship without the existence of a dominant big-man or wing, it changed the game, making the transition for most of the other 29 teams and the league office a necessary one.

And the Warriors are being left behind in some respects by the rapid-fire offenses now. 

The Warriors were 10th in pace– number of possessions a team has per game – after finishing in the top five in each of the last four seasons. 

Their jump this season (100.43 to 101.78), their highest in the run, was minimal compared to the Bucks, Clippers, 76ers and Thunder. 

A lot of that is because of how volatile their gameplay has been, at different times scoring 104 points on 84 shots per game during one eight-game stretch and 133 on 95 shots per game during another six weeks later. 

The Warriors became a juggernaut by being somewhat predictable. Moving the ball, finding shooters in optimal spots, giving Curry the greenest light in history, dominating the third quarter and abandoning a true big man when the going got tough. It was so predictable yet impossible to stop, and they seemed to always come through when it mattered, much like the Kobe-Shaq Lakers in the early 2000s.

But all sure things that made them great are for the most part gone. They are no longer predictable, even on a possession-to-possession basis, much like the early 2000s Lakers. 

In so many respects, the Warriors are suffering under the weight of their own creation.

The creation of the small-ball, everybody-can-shoot-threes-and-defend-everybody mentality that helped them win three championships; the creation of a team so dominant that it will lose (or gain) focus at the drop of a hat, all while the opponent is focused from the jump; the creation of a team so successful that its biggest threat is the possibility of its own failure. 

If there was ever a time for a team to take out the Warriors, whether it be the Rockets, Blazers, Bucks, Raptors, Celtics or 76ers, the time is now.

The weight of the world is almost getting too heavy for the back-to-back champs.