Warriors Struggle For Three Quarters in Rough Loss to Kings

With a roster like the Warriors have, they need to play a full 48 minutes to have a chance to win. Against the Sacramento Kings, on the road, with Draymond Green and D’Angelo Russell both out, that became even more important. They needed a strong game from start to finish to have a shot.

That didn’t happen. They only played one good quarter and lost 111-98 in a game in which their offense never found any sort of consistency. It’s one the Warriors will want to put in the rearview mirror as quickly as possible.

“[It’s a] tough loss for us,” said assistant coach Mike Brown, who filled in for Steve Kerr after the head man was ejected in the second quarter. “We’ll get back, get a good practice in and get on to the next game.”

In the previous game, the Warriors had their best three-point shooting night percentage-wise of the season at 52.4%. The Warriors are arguably the league’s worst offensive team, so it’s not surprising that the law of averages swung things back in the other direction. What is at least somewhat surprising is how drastically it happened. They missed all 13 of their three-point attempts in the first half and finally hit one on their 18th try. The only areas in which the Warriors were finding success offensively were the paint and the free-throw line, and they weren’t getting to either of those frequently enough. Several of the young players committed bad turnovers that showed their inexperience.

The craziest part about it was that time and time again, they were actually doing the right things. They ran good plays and made the correct passes on most possessions. They just didn’t hit the open shots and settled for too many bad shots. Multiple players attributed this to a lack of energy.

“We gotta play with more energy,” Omari Spellman said. “People get down and quit. I think for stretches we just didn’t have it. We just kinda laid down. That’s not us at all. That’s something that has to be corrected and addressed.”

“I didn’t think that we had that energy that we talk about,” Glenn Robinson III added. “I didn’t think we really brought it tonight.”

The lack of effort was somewhat apparent in the first half, but it was at its most obvious in the third quarter. As the offense continued to lag, the frustration continued over onto the defensive side as the players got lazy and careless on rotations, close-outs and help defense. Combine this with a couple of young players making mistakes and you get a quarter in which the Kings dropped 38 points, made eight of their nine three-point attempts and shot 68.4% from the field overall. The Sacramento lead got as high as 31 and assured that the result would be determined long before the final buzzer.

In the fourth quarter, both sides of the ball finally clicked. The offense was smoother and the defense finally showed the effort that was needed throughout the game as the Warriors won the quarter 34-21. But by that point, it didn’t really matter. The Kings no longer had to play their absolute hardest and it showed. They were playing with the guys on the end of their bench — and being successful against them isn’t much for the Warriors to brag about.

In this one, neither the statistics nor the eye test are deceiving. The Warriors shot poorly — and they lost. They turned the ball over too much — and they lost. Their three-point defense was bad — and they lost. No individual player had a particularly good game — and they lost. Their effort was bad across the board — and they lost.

Up next is the Milwaukee Bucks, arguably the NBA’s best team. A matchup with Giannis Antetokounmpo and company will require the Warriors to bring far more energy than they did at Golden 1 Center. However, as Spellman noted, quality of opponent should not determine how much energy a team brings.

“We should play the same way, with the same intensity, the same energy every time,” he said.

Shortly after the game concluded in Sacramento, news broke that Marquese Chriss had been cut to make room for a full-time roster spot for Damion Lee. But regardless of who is on the roster, the Warriors have to perform better in future games.