Steph Curry and Draymond Green returned for a Sunday night matchup against the Hawks. Atlanta was dealing with injury issues of their own, missing star big man John Collins among others.

After an even first quarter in which both teams scored 24 points, you could feel that this one was going to be close the whole way, and that’s exactly what we got. Both teams really started getting going in the second quarter, and the Warriors went into the half with a 57-55 lead despite struggling to shoot the ball from deep.

The third quarter was also dead even, but the Hawks began to pull away in the first half of the second quarter while Steph and Draymond sat on the bench. In the end, the Warriors were unable to overcome that deficit and lost 117-111.

The Warriors shot a higher percentage from the floor than the Hawks did but made just 10 of their 40 three point attempts. Despite that, the Warriors still had plenty of opportunities to win the game. Steph Curry scored 37 points in a dazzling performance, Draymond Green had a near triple-double with four steals, and Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Oubre pitched in with an efficient 16 and 20 points, respectively. James Wiseman also played well as despite only putting up eight and five in 18 minutes, he played a nearly mistake-free game in which he also had a few hustle plays that Draymond Green noticeably was happy with.

At the end of the day, the difference was the performances by the two teams’ benches. The Warriors bench scored just 19 points as a unit; the Hawks got 25 points off the bench from Danilo Gallinari alone, and 55 points altogether. Steph, Draymond, Wiseman, and Wiggins were the only four players for the Warriors to end with a positive plus/minus, with Steph and Draymond having the highest at +8 and +9. On the other hand, off the bench, Damien Lee was -13, and none of the other four bench players who got minutes were above -7.

However, those numbers weren’t necessary to paint the picture of this game. It was very obvious that the Warriors were two different teams with and without Steph and Draymond on the floor. Despite getting 36 great minutes from those two, the bench couldn’t hold it down for the other twelve. The bench will need to improve, as the Warriors cannot afford to lose games like this if they want a chance at the playoffs.