Look, I’ve been covering the Warriors for eight years, and at this point, I should probably just accept that this team operates on a different plane of basketball logic than the rest of us mortals.
They opened the season by dropping 119 on the Lakers. Beat them straight up. Then they went into overtime with the Nuggets and survived with 137 points. Dismantled Memphis 131-118. These aren’t scrubs. These are Western Conference playoff teams with championship aspirations. The Warriors looked at legitimate
competition and said, “Yeah, we got this.”
But then Portland showed up without Damian Lillard and without head coach Chauncey Billups, and suddenly the Warriors defense forgot how to exist. 139 points. Now I know the Blazers are better than people expected and it was the second night of a back-to-back, so maybe that’s a scheduled loss? But just when you thought maybe that was a fluke, Golden State travels to Milwaukee and loses to a Bucks team sitting Giannis Antetokounmpo. Ryan Rollins, a guy the Warriors drafted and then let walk, drops a career-high 32 points on them. The Milwaukee bench outscored Golden State’s reserves 38-29.
Let me repeat that: Ryan Rollins, former Warriors developmental project, just had the game of his life against the team that drafted him while their actual superstar watched from the bench in street clothes.
This is peak Warriors basketball, and honestly, I’m not even mad anymore. I’m impressed by the consistency of their inconsistency.
Stephen Curry put up 27 points against Milwaukee. Jonathan Kuminga added 24. Jimmy Butler contributed 23 and 11 boards. The talent was there. The execution was not. The Warriors got Milwaukee’s lead down to two points with four minutes left, and then Ryan Rollins hit a three-pointer that basically said, “Remember me?” and started an 11-2 run that ended the game.
Here’s the thing about this pattern that makes it so distinctly Warriors: They’re not sleepwalking through games. They’re genuinely trying. And we know that everyone who is in the NBA is there because they are the 99th percentile of all basketball players in the world. But there’s something about facing undermanned opponents that makes these Dubs go from worldbeaters to mortal.
The problem is that in a Western Conference where every game matters, you can’t afford to give away wins to teams playing with house money. Portland and Milwaukee showed up with nothing to lose and everything to prove. But here’s why I’m shrugging instead of panicking: It’s October. The Warriors are 4-2. They’ve proven they can beat playoff-caliber teams. The losses to undermanned squads are frustrating, sure, but they’re also completely fixable. This isn’t a talent problem. It’s a focus problem. And focus can be coached, adjusted, and corrected.
Will Golden State dominate every opponent regardless of who’s in uniform like it’s the 73-win season? Probably not consistently. Because that would require them to stop being so remarkably, predictably, annoyingly human. And if eight years of covering this team has taught me anything, it’s that the Warriors are going to Warrior.
All we can do is buckle up and enjoy the chaos until it’s parade day in San Francisco.
