The Warriors used to be the greatest show on hardwood.
Night after night, they were doing a genre-pushing, never-before-seen live improv set — a blur of movement and mouthguard chewing and some of the most ridiculous and beautiful basketball that went beyond the realm of even your wildest imaginations.
Man, were they fun.
But that is not a word I would use to describe this year’s Warriors.
No, these Warriors are doing something laboriously, painfully joyless.
What a slog.
And it appears poised to become even worse.
Steph Curry couldn’t finish Wednesday’s tough-watch 104-100 loss to the Rockets with what the Warriors have classified as a right quad contusion. The injury — which hampered Curry late and seemingly escalated in the game’s final minutes — is enough of a concern that Curry was immediately scheduled for an MRI.
The Warriors aren’t a particularly good team with Curry.
Without him?
Well, they should thank the bottom tier of the West for helping out the grading curve. The play-in-tournament only requires something approaching mediocrity to qualify these days. A .500 record? Unnecessary, it seems.
That’s great news for the Dubs, who can only manage a .500 record despite Curry playing 15 games and averaging 28.8 points in those contests.
Outside of No. 30’s sharpshooting, the Warriors’ flow is sludge — a once-cogent system replaced by hesitation, isolation, and contested shots. They’re 22nd in the NBA in offensive rating, and the fact it’s that high is almost entirely due to the Dubs spamming 3-point shots, taking the second-most in the league and making the most (thanks to Curry).
What once was an offense dictated by feel and smarts has turned into a rote exercise of clank.
But even worse, on defense, they are a revolving door. This team has neither a point-of-attack defense on the perimeter nor a true deterrent interior presence. Opposing teams can not only get anywhere they want on the floor on any given action, but they can often find two or three wins per trip down the floor. With the Rockets on Wednesday, it was even more, thanks to all the offensive rebounds Houston was able to grab, unencumbered.
We’re getting weekly sermons from Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green, but they’re not helping.
In all, the Warriors look like an old, slow, short, disjointed, and generally unmotivated operation.
Oh, and they turn the ball over all the time, too.
This is a totally different type of “Death Lineup.” This is one that kills your spirit for the game.
Now with Curry likely to be sidelined for a bit, what’s going to happen?
Curry maintained the illusion of competence for the Dubs. “Well, at least Steph is out there” might be the most mumbled statement in the Bay this winter.
No longer.
If this were a different era of the playoffs, we would be writing the obituary for the 2025-26 season before the “26” part started.
But the bar is so low to make the postseason these days — just win two of five games and you’re a play-in team — that we’ll have to keep engaging with the concept of this team playing more than 82 games this season.
That reads like a threat, no?
The Warriors have no size, no stops, no shooting, and now, potentially, no savior.
Joy? It has left the building.
And it’s been replaced by the grim reality that this team is one bad-looking MRI away from downright irrelevance.