Dub Nation witnessed the first home loss of the season Friday night, and somehow it came at the hands of the Portland Trail Blazers…again! The Warriors fell 127-123 in a game that felt less like a contest and more like a fever dream, marking their third consecutive defeat and dropping them to 1-2 in the Emirates NBA Cup. When you lose to the same rebuilding team twice in the early part of the season, questions start piling up faster than turnovers in transition.
Let’s talk about what actually happened
on the court, because the numbers tell a story that’s equal parts confusing and concerning.
Stephen Curry went 9-for-17 from three-point range, dropping 38 points in 34 minutes. That should be enough. That’s usually been enough. But when your superstar puts up those numbers on that efficiency and you still lose at home, you’ve got deeper problems than one player can solve. Draymond Green added 11 points with 8 assists in a game where his defensive presence couldn’t stem the tide. Jimmy Butler shot 5-of-15 from the field but added 8 rebounds and 5 assists.
The Warriors actually led this game at the half, with Brandin Podziemski doing some heavy lifting in what is arguably his best half of the year so far.
Podz would finish with 20 points and 3 steals off the bench. But here’s the part that stings: Caleb Love, a player averaging single digits coming into this game, torched the Warriors for a career-high 26 points on 9-for-20 shooting from the field. When a Blazers guard is having the game of his life against your defense, that’s not bad luck folks; that’s a pattern. Portland shot 48% from the field as a team and somehow made the Warriors look slow in transition, which is never a good look for a team that loves to control the fast break tempo like Golden State does.
The Warriors shot 40% from three and 87% from the free-throw line. Those are winning percentages. Except they’re not, apparently, when you allow 127 points to a team that’s supposed to be tanking. Three straight losses doesn’t erase what this team accomplished early in the season, but it does exacerbate real questions about focus, execution, and whether this roster has the defensive identity required to compete when the stakes matter most. The Dubs are now 9-9, and that feels about right for how inconsistently they’ve been.
