The Golden State Warriors lost to the reigning defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder tonight on the road, 104-97. They also missed seven free throws, egads!
You can sit with that math however you want. But here’s what I refuse to let that number erase: a shorthanded Golden State team, without Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler, walked into the building that is currently the most dangerous home court in the Western Conference and made the best team in basketball sweat for 48 minutes.
That counts for
something.
Gui Santos dropped a career-high 22 points and 11 rebounds on the best defensive roster in the conference. Draymond Green shot 6-of-10, hit four threes, and looked like a man who has been here before because he absolutely has. Brandin Podziemski ran the offense with 17 points and 6 assists against one turnover, the kind of quiet competence that championship rosters are built around. The Warriors outrebounded the Thunder 47-42. They generated 28 assists. They even won the turnover battle -3 against OKC’s pesky defense. The Dubs came back from double digits down in the third quarter and made it a genuine game when nobody outside the locker room expected them to.
The missed free throws hurt. Going 11-of-18 from the line against a Thunder team that went 23-of-24 from the charity stripe is the difference between a loss and a moment Dub Nation would have talked about for weeks. But I’ve watched this franchise long enough to know the difference between a team that is broken and a team that is building toward something through the fire. Tonight looked like the latter. The fight was real. The competitiveness was real. The youth on this roster absorbing a playoff-caliber environment against a 50-win team, without their stars, and still finding a way to make the fourth quarter interesting? That is something to build on.
Oklahoma City earned their 50th win. They are legitimate contenders to go back-to-back and tonight confirmed it again. But the Warriors made them work for every possession, and when Curry gets back, when this group remembers what full strength feels like, tonight will be one of those games they point to.
