Warriors following LeBron’s blueprint

OAKLAND, Calif. — The Warriors deserved every bit of Sunday night’s loss to the Pistons.

Frankly, a loss like Sunday’s was more than a week in the making.

But if you think that a loss to Detroit is going to spark something in this Warriors team — if you think Sunday’s game will serve as a wakeup call to a Golden State team that’s slogged its way through the first seven games of the year — I fear you’ll be disappointed.

The Warriors players won’t admit it openly, but they’re hardly hiding it, either: They’re taking a page out of the LeBron James playbook this regular season.

And I don’t think they’re going to have much incentive to change course anytime soon.

LeBron hasn’t cared about the regular season in years — that’s no secret. He can do that because he knows, deep down, that there’s no team in the Eastern Conference that can challenge him in the spring.

LeBron also knows that he’s a force of nature — a man who can singlehandedly win a basketball game against 28 of the league’s teams — and that his energy is a finite resource. So while yes, the regular season technically matters as a tune-up for the playoffs, it’s drastically overrated.

As such, every year LeBron cares less and less about the requisite 82.

In recent years, he’s even come to care less and less about the first and second rounds of the playoffs. He’s used playoff series as warmup games — glorified preseason affairs.

That’s how unchallenged LeBron is in the East.

And can you blame him? The man has been to seven consecutive Finals — he has every right to feel superior. He hasn’t been beaten in the East since his first stint with Cleveland.

Who in his conference is going to force him to try before April? What team is going to challenge him to improve in December or February, much less in October?

LeBron can operate in a rare state of hubris — he knows that if he plays at his best when the games really matter, no one in the East can beat him.

The Warriors totally understand where LeBron is coming from: They’re operating in that state of justified hubris as well — except their dominance covers an entire league.

Golden State has played self-destructive basketball this season — they’re turning the ball over too often, they’ve fouled too often, and they’ve been beaten on the offensive glass too often. Every night, it’s something different that does in the Warriors. That’s the reason the Warriors have lost three games — it has little to do with their opponents, no matter how well they might play.

The Warriors touted their continuity — they returned 12 players from last year’s title team — as a positive in the preseason. There might be a downside to continuity, though: This Warriors team knows exactly what they’re capable of doing.

The Warriors know that if they bring their A game, no one in the league can even come close to beating them — they learned that last year when they went 16-1 in the postseason, the only loss coming in a Finals game where the Cavs set a record for three-pointers made.

In 2015, the Warriors had to prove they were the real deal. In 2016, they had to prove their title wasn’t a fluke — they won 73 games, got a bit too full of themselves, and lost a close Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Last year, they had to prove that they still ran the league and that Kevin Durant would only make them better.

The Warriors barely had to break a sweat to win the title last year. This year, they return the vast majority of last year’s roster. What do they have to prove?

No one can force the Warriors to sit up and take notice. No one can strike true fear into the Warriors’ players hearts, because they know the truth, just like James.

What has any team done to incentivize the Warriors to improve their current state of sloppy, procrastinating play? Nothing.

And don’t expect that to change.