The Warriors won 106-100 on Sunday against the Phoenix Suns, but Steve Kerr and the players will be the first to tell you: this team still has a long ways to go.
Three games into the season and we are still waiting for a dominant performance from the Warriors. And while that isn’t all that surprising of a development considering all the new moving parts, the Warriors will be measured differently than just wins and losses.
Two days after struggling to finish-off a lowly New Orleans Pelicans roster, the Warriors were pushed to the brink by T.J. Warren and the Phoenix Suns.
The good news: Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant’s scoring abilities have been the most consistent theme for Golden State to start the year. Durant had a season-high 37 points; Curry posted 28. Zaza Pachulia has gotten over his opening night yips. The effort and intensity was visible against the Suns, unlike the season opener against the Spurs. The defense is starting to get better. The death lineup figured out how to close-out the game together.
The not-so-good news: Pretty much everything else. The Suns are one of the least talented teams in the NBA and Phoenix hung around with Golden State all afternoon on Sunday. The Warriors are still struggling mightily behind the three-point line — anyone not named Curry or Durant combined to go 1-for-17 . Their bench play is sorely lacking the punch of year’s past, especially from Andre Iguodala. Klay Thompson’s in a shooting funk (3-for-21 from three to start the year). Could that possibly have to do with Durant? Draymond Green has been an animal on defense, but his role on offense — outside of being a distributor — is still unclear.
Again, this is not a panic button article. These all are likely temporary struggles. There’s no way the Warriors’s identity as the league’s best three-point shooting has vanished with a core group of players in tact.
“I’m not really worried about that,” Curry told the CSN broadcast after the win. “We are getting good looks.”
“There will be a night when the Warriors hit three-pointers,” play-by-play announcer Bob Fitzgerald said. “And when that happens, the NBA will be in real trouble.”
But until then, a tiny cloud of suspicion will hang around Golden State. The Warriors have dominant basketball players but they’ve yet to show they’re are dominant team. Turnovers and rebounds, as expected, are keeping other teams in games. And remember, turnovers were Golden State’s biggest issue from a season ago. This thing is going to take more time than a lot of us realized.
The Warriors won with grit, defense and the Curry-Durant star-power combination against the Suns, not at a bad thing at all. But we’re still waiting to see this team perform like a well-oiled machine. We’re still waiting for this team to play a perfect game, where we see what everyone’s role really is supposed to look like. Like what we saw last season when this team was obliterating teams and racing off to a 24-0 start.
Those types of performances are probably not too far away. But you would’ve liked to have seen it against the Suns.