Talented Warriors are not without roster flaws

OAKLAND, Calif. — The Warriors have four AllStars, all of whom are comfortably among the top 20 players in the NBA.

That talent advantage has allowed them to cruise through the last two seasons virtually unchallenged, leading to an NBA championship last season and making them overwhelming favorites to win one again this year.

But even as experts have kept the Warriors in the pole position to win a second straight title, they had a roster with vulnerabilities that could derail their title run if the right team could push them and breaks went against them.

It appears the right team and the breaks have arrived.

By losing 95-92 to the Rockets on Tuesday night in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals at Oracle Arena, what was supposed to be another relatively easy march to an NBA crown has been met with stiff resistance.

And those vulnerabilities in the Warriors’ roster, the ones that didn’t seem severe? Well, they’re looking pretty glaring now.

“It’s all about toughness right now,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said after his team showed that trait far more than in a much-criticized playoff past.

“I think there was great basketball played on both sides. The rest of it is just gutting it out, finding a will, a way and a want.”

There hasn’t been much of a need for the Warriors to find any of those things over the last two years. And with 12 of the 15 players from last year’s title team back, what could go wrong?

Well, the Warriors’ two main free-agent additions, Nick Young and Omri Casspi, were spectacular failures. And having centers making up a staggering 40 percent of the roster in a league that has trended toward playing smaller and faster for years never made any sense.

Those decisions left the Warriors vulnerable to precisely the position they found themselves in Tuesday night. With no Andre Iguodala, who missed the game with a lateral contusion in his left leg, and no Patrick McCaw, who has been out since suffering a spine contusion March 31, the Warriors essentially were left with an eight-man rotation for their biggest game of the playoffs.

One of those players was Young, who was a putrid minus-14 in 12 minutes, 30 seconds of court time while scoring two points, an exclamation point on what has been a staggeringly bad one-year deal.

Casspi, on the other hand, isn’t even on the postseason roster. His season was completely derailed by injuries, and he was eventually waived before the playoffs so the Warriors could convert Quinn Cook’s two-way contract into a minimum deal.

The Warriors are still favored to win this series, but their roster suddenly looks vulnerable.