Analyzing the Warriors' Road Struggles
We were sure this would be cleaned up by now.
The Warriors currently boast the NBA’s worst road record despite Stephen Curry averages a hair under 30 points per game on 50/40/90 shooting splits, a feat he accomplished once before during his unanimous MVP season… where the Dubs won an NBA-record 73 games.
Times have changed. Golden State is currently 7-29 on the road, including an 11-game road losing streak after yesterday against the Memphis Grizzlies. Despite being the exact inverse (29-7) at home this season, the team cannot seem to put together a quality road win. The most frustrating part is that each loss away from Chase Center has a very similar formula:
It’s mind-boggling that this cycle just repeats itself every time they go down at their opponent’s court… until you start to get into the weeds of it.
1) Defensive Errors
There was a play last night that exemplified a large amount of the Warriors’ struggles, and it involves newly-signed wing Anthony Lamb, who’s actually been doing this all season. A defender drives into the middle where a help defenders is awaiting him, Lamb helps off on the drive and leaves the man in the strong side corner wide open to cash in the highest-percentage three pointer in the entire game of basketball. While the issue is primarily exemplified by Lamb’s defensive lack of awareness, it’s been a Warriors problem all season: Guys see Draymond Green (who can recover successfully to the shooter most of the time) do it and think that they can to. Green is the only person with the defensive pedigree to help in that kind of situation, and usually he doesn’t have to because he’s the one contesting the shot from the drive.
The Warriors boast a 108.0 defensive rating at home, and unfortunately also have a 120.0 defensive rating at the road. They just lack the engagement to focus at home, which is very probably in part to our next reason why they struggle so hard on the road…
2) Home Crowd Energy
The team loves to get up for the attendees at Chase, and for guys who have done the dance so many times now, getting up for the fans is more important than the bloat of the regular season: Their wins have come in arenas like Washington D.C. where Steph is getting MVP chants from opposing fans for his brilliance. The Warriors are showmen at heart. They’ve always been the most fun watch on the hardwood so far back as their dynasty began. They play an electric style of basketball that leaves people in awe, and they have the greatest offensive weapon ever who also happens to just love doing it for the crowd.
Between the no-look threes, the dizzying dribble combinations, and the flashy dimes on the fast break, Stephen Curry’s supreme skillset is the ultimate form of entertainment on the basketball court, and it gets results. Part of the problem that hasn’t been capitalized on as much this season (like his 50-point bomb at Crypto.com Arena against the Clippers last week) is that the rest of the team can’t get up for the games the way he does when they’re out on a road trip. Another part of the problem, however…
3) Unlucky Shot Variance
It feels weird to put the Warriors and the term “unlucky” in the same sentence for anyone who’s not a Warriors fan. But go back to the 2016 Finals with a questionable suspension, and injuries to both Steph and center Andrew Bogut. Go back to the 2019 Finals with Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant suffering injuries that kept them out for a year after. The 2020-2021 season, where Steph averaged a career-high 32 points per game, but his backcourt mate wasn’t there to help him share the load of carrying the team because of yet another season-ending injury in training camp. If luck was really on their side, the Warriors would have won 6 championships by now.
Which brings us to the fact that opponents, for some reason, just love to hit the difficult shots against them. At home, the Warriors let their opponents cash in on 45% of their shots. On the road, despite allowing IDENTICAL opponent field goal attempts per game, the teams they play shoot 50% against them. The disparity is even crazier with the three-ball, where visitors to Chase shoot 32% on their threes… and an insane 41% when the Warriors are the away team. Again, the number of threes allowed is identical: Teams just make more of them at their home court by a margin that no other team in the league can claim.
But their lazy defense, which has been an issue on the road, should explain it, right? Not exactly. At home, they allow 15.2 threes per game which are considered “Open” by the NBA’s tracking database. On the road, they allow 14.8. There’s just a 9% difference in the opponent’s favor when they’re on the road (30% at home versus 39% on the road). On shots in general, opponents make shots deemed defended as “Tight” at a 24% from deep (50% EFG) at Chase. In the other team’s arena, that shoots up to 36% (57% EFG).
That isn’t just bad defense. There is a missing factor there… and that’s what we’d call luck.
In Conclusion…
Yes, the Warriors are not the same team on the road as they are at home. There are flaws in their defensive effort and awareness when they aren’t playing for their home fans. They constantly make mistakes in part because they just seem to get discouraged in ways that opposing teams are discouraged having to go through a Curry Flurry with no answer.
But there is an added element of bad luck. It could very well be that shooters get hotter against the Dubs when they get more open shots… But they aren’t getting more open shots. Even shots considered “Wide Open”, the Warriors give up only one (1) more per game on the road than at home. This is some all-time bad luck, and it’s compounded by constant errors that are more present on the road. To put it in the words of Warriors play-by-play man Bob Fitzgerald, “opponents while at home are Steph Curry”.
They’re not quite as good, but they sure are close at this rate.
(Photo credit: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)