Warriors Drop Fourth Straight in Disjointed Contest With Pistons

To put it mildly, Saturday night’s matchup was a bit all over the place. The Warriors and the Detroit Pistons combined for 35 turnovers, most of which were the result of poor decision making. Several very makeable shots were missed. A total of three technical fouls were issued to the Warriors, two of which resulted in the ejection of Draymond Green.

But by the time the dust had settled at Chase Center, the only thing that mattered was that the Pistons played a slightly smoother game, especially in the second half, and emerged victorious by a final score of 111-104.

“It wasn’t our night,” Steve Kerr said. “We just never really got any traction.”

In the modern NBA, many games are decided at the three-point line. As that shot becomes more and more important to the game, the team that shoots threes better regularly wins games. Saturday’s game was largely determined by the work inside of the arc. Both teams made 11 triples and took roughly the same number of overall field-goal attempts, but the Pistons shot an excellent 57.1% from two-point range while the Warriors shot an abysmal 36%. It was actually sort of bizarre. At 52.4%, the Warriors were having one of their best three-point shooting nights of the year — and missing what should be, at least on paper, the easier shots. They took tightly contested midrange jumpers and long twos rather than threes. They missed several layups that would have gone in on nearly any other night as big men such as Andre Drummond and Thon Maker provided rim protection. Good Warriors three-point shooting and bad Pistons three-point defense kept the Warriors in the game the whole way. The two-point shooting and a number of possessions wasted on dumb turnovers stopped them from getting any kind of consistent offense and prevented them from winning.

“We just never could get our footing tonight,” Kerr said.

The first half actually saw the Warriors come out with the advantage by three points. They were outshot by the Pistons from the field, but shot lights-out from three and took advantage of some truly bad Detroit turnovers to grab the lead. But the second half saw the Warriors cool off considerably and commit dumb turnovers, much like the ones the Pistons committed in the first half. After a couple of Pistons runs, one of which came immediately after Green’s ejection, the game was all but over.

For the game, the Warriors only committed 14 turnovers — not great, but not unacceptable either. However, many of those turnovers came immediately after forcing a stop, which added to the pain. On multiple occasions, right when it seemed as though the Warriors could have a chance to climb back into the game, someone would throw a careless pass and the Pistons would get a breakaway score.

“Our offense was bad, and so we got stuck in some transition plays where they got easy baskets,” Kerr said.

The game was far from all negative. The three-point shooting was strong and while the Pistons did have a number of breakdowns, the Warriors took advantage of them nicely. The issues on the glass from the past two games were largely cleaned up as the Warriors grabbed more offensive rebounds than the Pistons did and won the second-chance points battle. Alec Burks scored 27 points while earning 14 free-throw attempts and making all of them. But the player of the game for the Warriors was Omari Spellman, who turned in arguably his best performance of the season. Following up on a solid outing in Minnesota on Thursday, he scored 23 points and looked confident, unafraid to fire away from three or go to the rim.

“When they call my number, when they call my name, [I] gotta be ready,” he said.

But for the second game in a row, Spellman’s work was the high point of a game that is nowhere near the Warriors’ best efforts of the season. It was far from their worst performance, but that is little consolation in a game they absolutely could have won.