Porous defense leads to blowout
SALT LAKE CITY — Midway through the fourth quarter Tuesday night, with the Warriors well on their way to a 12999 loss to the Jazz, Stephen Curry sat next to Draymond Green on the visiting team bench.
“Can you remember us having a performance that bad?” Curry asked Green, who could not.
In enduring its most lopsided defeat of the season, Golden State was a far cry from the team widely projected to repeat as NBA champion. A switchheavy system gave way to matador defense. Three nights after a thrilling win over Boston, the Warriors allowed Utah to shoot 58.2 percent from the field, including 14-for-28 from threepoint range.
Golden State gave up 35 points in the first quarter and 69 by halftime. When the Warriors stepped on the floor for the fourth quarter, they were down 103-85. Head coach Steve Kerr emptied his bench with more than six minutes left, only to call for time again when his reserves were just as lackadaisical defensively as the starters had been.
When Ricky Rubio and Donovan Mitchell were pulled with 2:08 remaining, a capacity Vivint Smart Home Arena crowd roared. It was a memorable night for a team likely bound for the lottery. Meanwhile, Golden
State was forced to grapple with the recurrence of perhaps its biggest issue: a tendency to get complacent.
Utah forward Joe Ingles, who entered Tuesday averaging 9.8 points per game, drained six three-pointers — one more than the Warriors totaled. Golden State’s Kevin Durant and Curry, two of the most efficient shooters in NBA history, finished a combined 9-for-26, including 1-for-12 from three-point range.
“I saw one team get their (butt) kicked,” Kerr said. “That’s what I saw.”
Ninety minutes before tipoff, when asked about the Warriors’ penchant for defending only when necessary, Kerr conceded that he was “OK with that” because playoff-level effort each night isn’t a fair expectation for a team trying to play deep into June for the fourth straight year. He added that his biggest regular-season hope is for Golden State to build good habits and not completely break down defensively.
By that measure, Tuesday was disastrous. The Warriors, who touched down in Salt Lake City with the league’s sixth-best defensive rating, were slow to challenge shooters. Utah could do little wrong, rolling with a mix of layups, dunks and threepointers.
Early in the second quarter, Jazz forward Derrick Favors nabbed an inbounds pass from Klay Thompson, trotted up court and, with no defender within several feet of him, threw down a two-handed dunk. The Jazz, seemingly emboldened by the Warriors’ minimal resistance, got creative. Moments before halftime, Rubio stopped along the arc in transition and found Rudy Gobert for a reverse alley-oop.
Thompson and Andre Iguodala, who were flanking Gobert, hardly moved on the play. Late in the third quarter, after watching Utah pick off a lazy Omri Casspi pass for a lay-in, Kerr called for time. It was for naught. Golden State couldn’t snap out of its daze, leaving Kerr to pull his starters midway through the fourth period.
That Utah is far from an offensive juggernaut made matters only more curious. Entering Tuesday, the Jazz owned the NBA’s fifth-worst offense. A team that hadn’t reached the 100-point mark in any of its previous three games played the Warriors without its second-leading scorer, Rodney Hood, who was sidelined with a lower-leg injury.
“Our hearts weren’t in it,” Kerr said. “At this level, if your heart’s not in it, I don’t care how much talent you have. You’re going to lose.”
Less than a half-hour after the final buzzer sounded, Golden State players were watching highlights of Houston guard James Harden’s 60-point, 10rebound, 11-assist gem against Orlando, debating who will win the Super Bowl and chuckling as they thumbed through their iPhones. It had been an ugly loss, sure, but the Warriors recognized that moving forward requires a simple fix.
“The solution to this is just to play harder and be more focused when we step on that court,” Durant said. “We have a lot more games to go, and we have another opportunity to redeem ourselves.”