About 90 minutes before Monday evening’s contest tipped off, Warriors’ head coach Steve Kerr addressed the media and took responsibility for Golden State’s sluggish start.
At 1-2, the Warriors had yet to look like the overwhelming NBA Finals favorites everyone expected them to be, and in an uncharacteristic twist, a team loaded with veterans was committing silly, youthful mistakes that cost them opportunities against Houston and Memphis.
Kerr said his own preparation failures doomed the Warriors, so it was no surprise that shortly after the Warriors’ head coach admitted his errors, his team rectified them with its best quarter of the season, a 40-24 drubbing of the Mavericks that built plenty of cushion in Golden State’s 133-103 win.
But a deeper look at Monday’s Warriors’ win reveals that the same consistency issues that plagued the team during the first week of the season followed it into Dallas on Monday night against a Mavericks team that doesn’t begin to stack up talent-wise.
Midway through the second quarter, the Warriors were playing with their Hamptons Five lineup –a crew consisting of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green, and squaring off against a Mavericks’ rotation caught on the floor with two sub-six foot guards and 39-year-old Dirk Nowitzki playing center.
The personnel mismatches were staggering, and sometimes laughable, yet remarkably, Dallas didn’t just keep pace, it closed the gap almost entirely.
After Golden State started the game on a 23-8 run that featured eight points from Durant and eight points from Thompson, the Warriors kept up the heat thanks to Curry, who found himself at the foul line, rather than in foul trouble.
Through the first three games of the regular season, Curry compromised the Warriors’ rotations by picking up early fouls against Houston and Memphis, which played a significant role in Golden State’s downfall. On Monday, Curry was a magnet for the whistle in a good way, as his seven first quarter free throws helped him finish the frame with nine points.
The fact Curry was on the floor at all against Dallas was a mild surprise after the NBA levied a $50,000 fine against the Warriors’ star on Monday following Curry’s ejection in the final minute of Saturday evening’s loss. The Warriors were happy to have Curry for that first half barrage, but when he went to the bench at the start of the second, Golden State’s defense collapsed.
Led by the unlikely duo of J.J. Barea and Wesley Matthews, Dallas closed the gap, narrowing the Warriors’ lead to just five points with five minutes remaining in the half and then a single point with just over a minute. The Warriors’ 40-24 first quarter advantage ended up as just a 65-62 halftime lead, representing yet another lackluster showing on the defensive end of the floor.
Losing the second quarter by a 13-point margin was hardly a result the Warriors will be satisfied with, especially considering the Mavericks’ 0-3 record and their relative lack of depth up and down the roster.
Despite those troubles, the Warriors used the halftime to break to regroup, and once again, after a point in time when Kerr had an extensive opportunity to prepare his players, Golden State responded.
It took 12 minutes and 16 seconds for Golden State to extend its lead up to 18 points. Thanks to a 15-2 run in the middle of the third quarter that featured a pair of Thompson three-pointers, the Warriors completely regained control and made up for their extended second quarter lapse.
The final score eventually indicated a blowout, but that was hardly the case for two and a half quarters on Monday night. A Warriors’ team that can beat any team by a double digit margin on any given night cruised in the fourth quarter against the Mavericks, but in its first four games this season, Golden State has still yet to dominate.