Bad Start Dooms Warriors Against Timberwolves

Chalk this one up to sluggishness and a lack of effort.

After starting off slow and falling behind quickly on Thursday night, the Warriors played better throughout the rest of the game, but continued to lag behind in a few crucial aspects and weren’t able to catch up, resulting in a 99-84 road loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Following a 53-minute contest against the Spurs, the Warriors took the roughly 1100-mile trip from San Antonio to Minneapolis to play another contest on just one day’s rest. It was very quickly clear that the travel had caught up to them. Their defense wasn’t providing the hustle and energy needed. In the first quarter, the Timberwolves got too many open looks from three, too many free runs to the rim and too many points. Shabazz Napier, who is averaging 8.8 points per game this season, did whatever he wanted and scored 11 on 4-4 shooting in the first quarter alone. The Warrior offense was similarly ineffective. They went through too many stagnant possessions and missed plenty of makeable looks to wind up shooting 39.1% from the field and 14.3% from distance in the first quarter. Before the Dubs could even gain their footing, they trailed 34-19 against a Timberwolves team that was missing Andrew Wiggins, Karl-Anthony Towns and Jeff Teague. They were playing, effectively, the Timberwolves’ junior varsity team. And losing by 15 after twelve minutes.

The Warriors played far better in the remaining three quarters. They shot more efficiently and defended better, posting at least 40% shooting from the field and allowing fewer than 25 points in each quarter. But it wasn’t nearly enough. In stretches when their offense was performing, the defense couldn’t string together any stops. When the defense stepped up, the offense was unable to get anything going. And because both never came together at once, the final margin of defeat ended up being the same as it was at the end of the first quarter.

Much like the loss against the Spurs, a few specific areas can be pointed out as to where the Warriors went wrong. And much like the loss against the Spurs, one of those areas was rebounding and second-chance points. For the second straight game, the Warriors were outrebounded by nine and allowed double-digit offensive rebounds. Against the Timberwolves, however, their issues were far worse. They allowed 17 offensive boards (compared to 10 against the Spurs) while grabbing just seven of their own (they picked up nine in San Antonio). Furthermore, the troubles in Texas seemed mostly to be a matter of quality rebounding by the Spurs. In Minnesota, the Warriors simply didn’t put in the work needed to get the rebounds. At times, it genuinely felt like the Timberwolves cared more about whether or not they got the ball than the Warriors did. The road team was outhustled and outworked and lost the second-chance points battle by a mark of 20-4. On the two-game road trip, that stat category wound up at 43-15 in favor of Not The Warriors. In each of those two games, the amount the Warriors lost the second-chance points battle by was greater than the amount the Warriors lost the game by. In each of those two games, if the second-chance buckets had been even between the teams, the Warriors probably would have won.

The two players who turned in the best performances for Golden State were the Villanova products, Eric Paschall and Omari Spellman. Neither player had a particularly high volume scoring game — Paschall scored 13 and Spellman had 10 — but both were confident and aggressive and actively sought to get to the rim. This bodes particularly well for Paschall, who has struggled with his confidence amidst injury troubles. Spellman should get a similar boost from this performance, especially after he provided the highlight of the game with a spectacular slam on former Warrior Jordan Bell in the fourth quarter.

But as exciting as that play was, it was one highlight in a game of mostly lowlights. They started off slow and picked it up a little bit — but not nearly enough. The Warriors have played a lot of games this season in which they can be proud of their effort and competitiveness. This was not one of them.