Let’s address the elephant wearing blue and gold: the Warriors are a catastrophically bad road team, and Monday night in Brooklyn offers zero mercy.
Fresh off blowing a seven-point lead in the final 1:43
against Toronto, Golden State (16-16) limps into Barclays Center for the second night of a back-to-back carrying a 6-12 road record that screams “play-in team at best.” This isn’t just mediocrity. This is a team that transforms into a completely different organism the moment they leave Chase Center, like Clark Kent without access to a phone booth.
Golden State Warriors at Brooklyn Nets
When: December 29th, 2025 | 4:30 PM PT
TV: NBCSBA
Radio: 95.7 The Game
The Nets (10-19) aren’t good, but they just watched Cam Thomas drop 30 points in his return from a 20-game hamstring absence. Meanwhile, Michael Porter Jr. is doing his best impression of prime Klay Thompson, averaging 25.8 points while shooting 40.4% from three on nine attempts per game. That’s elite volume shooting against a Warriors defense that just allowed 141 points to a Raptors team missing key pieces.
Here’s the nightmare scenario Dub Nation needs to confront: Golden State committed 21 turnovers in Toronto, leading to 35 points. They’re 4-13 this season when turning the ball over more than their opponent. Steve Kerr admitted the team looked “scattered” against pressure defense, and I wonderrrrrrr if Brooklyn will try to apply that same blueprint after watching the tape.
Steph Curry dropped 39 points and still lost. Draymond Green had a much needed 21 points and it didn’t matter. The Warriors led by double digits multiple times and collapsed like a house of cards in a wind tunnel. This is the pattern: control games, fail to execute in crunch time, watch leads evaporate against athletic teams that can switch everything and pressure the ball.
The back-to-back element amplifies everything. Tired legs don’t navigate full-court pressure. Fatigued minds make careless passes. A roster already struggling with athleticism and depth gets exposed even further on zero rest.
Brooklyn represents exactly the kind of trap game that has defined Golden State’s season. Not talented enough to generate fear, just athletic and opportunistic enough to punish a team playing its seventh road back-to-back game. The Warriors need to prove they can execute basic offensive principles under pressure, protect the basketball, and close out a winnable game.
Otherwise, that 6-12 road record keeps spiraling, and the gap between playoff aspirations and play-in reality becomes a canyon.
