Warriors are quite simply blown away by Raptors
Andrew Wiggins’ jumper clanked off the back iron and the Raptors, having secured the rebound, eased into a possession. After a couple of passes, Gary Trent Jr. blew by Damion Lee and finished with a righthanded floater. The Warriors offered little interference, and the basket put the Raptors up by 52 with 3:30 left in the third quarter.
It’s difficult to pinpoint any one play where things unraveled for Golden State in Friday’s 130-77 loss to the
Raptors in Tampa, Florida, but this one represented much of what went wrong.
Throughout the night, the Warriors (23-26) settled for shots in isolation, played lackadaisical defense and had no identity with Stephen Curry (tailbone) and Draymond Green (sprained finger) sidelined on the second night of a back-to-back set.
Although Curry was ruled out early in the day
as he deals with lingering soreness from a tailbone injury that had sidelined him five games prior to playing the previous two, Green was a late scratch moments before tip-off. Green injured his finger during Thursday’s loss in Miami.
“Without Steph and Draymond out there, I think we were a little bit rudderless when things went south,” head coach Steve Kerr said. “We didn’t have the internal fight that we needed to get over the hump.”
The truth is, this game may have been lost before it began given their absences, but missing two leaders isn’t an excuse to lose like this. The Raptors (19-30) aren’t exactly setting the league on fire and yet, before the end of the third quarter, they had doubled the Warriors’ point total.
Midway through the fourth quarter, the Warriors were down by 61, which approached the largest margin of defeat in franchise history: a 63-point loss in 1972.
In games like this, the box score can look wonky.
Toronto forward Pascal Siakam scored 36 points on 24 shots in 31 minutes. Trent finished with 24 points and was a plus-54. The Raptors shot 53.4% overall, 42.9% from 3-point range and scored 30 points off 21 Warriors turnovers. Meanwhile, for the Warriors, no player scored more than Wiggins’ 15 points, and they shot 33.3% overall.
Meanwhile, for the Warriors, no player scored more than Wiggins’ 15 points, and they shot 33.3% overall. Filling in for Curry, second-year guard Jordan Poole finished with 10 points on 3-of-15 shooting. After a strong run in March in which he averaged 20 points per game, Poole has regressed. Over his last three games, he has made just 9-of-32 shots for 26 points combined.
The game got away in the second quarter. Golden State was down by just two points a minute-and-a-half into the period, but the Raptors used a 20-2 run to take a 20-point lead and break the game open. Toronto opened the second half with a 13-3 run to extend the deficit to 30. By the end of the third, the Warriors were down 108-56. Between the second and third quarters, Golden State was outscored 81-30. That is the largest point differential over a two-quarter span within a game in league history, according to Elias Sports Bureau.
In recent weeks, head coach Steve Kerr has been predicting a “run,” but it’s clear the Warriors are far away from breaking through. The absences of Curry and Green aside, Golden State has been plagued by lazy turnovers, head-scratching fouls and a once-elite defense in decline.
With this loss, the Warriors have lost six of their past seven and are only a half-game away from falling out of the play-in tournament picture. After an off day, the Warriors on Sunday will play the Hawks.