It’s mid-December, and the Warriors are understandably not playing at the level or with the intensity we are likely to see in several months. It’s unrealistic to expect a team with three NBA championships in four years, including in back-to-back seasons, to come out nightly with the same hunger and energy as a team on the rise, such as Toronto.
That much was evident Wednesday night. The visiting Raptors dominated the Warriors, 113-93, even with their best player, Kawhi Leonard, sitting out due to injury.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr expects for these lapses to naturally sprout in his fifth season on the job, he told KNBR Thursday evening. But he won’t accept his team faltering consistently.
“This is just the cold, hard reality of where we are five years into this thing,” Kerr told KNBR’s Tolbert and Lund. “In mid-December, (we have a) long season ahead. We are doing fine, not doing great, but we are fine, where we need to be. It’s not the same. It’s a different vibe, a different feeling. That’s what we have to navigate as a coaching staff. We have got to figure out how can we get these guys through some of the doldrums of the regular season, and keep moving forward, and keep getting better.”
So, how does the coaching staff navigate those doldrums? Kerr talked about splitting the season into quadrants and setting goals within those 20-or-so game stretches at a time. He said he talks about this with his players.
Yet there are some inevitable, unavoidable road blocks — which the Warriors have already experienced with injuries to Stephen Curry and Draymond Green — that disrupt those mini goals.
“You can’t plan for losing,” Kerr said. “You get some injuries, get knocked off course a little bit, then your goals change, the course changes a little bit. It’s all good, as long as you are continuing to move forward. That’s why I still feel really good about where we are, with the injuries we have had to Draymond and Steph, to be 19-10 and right at the top of the West. We are doing fine. I just want to make sure our habits are solid, and we are not stringing together a number of performances like last night. If that’s the case, now we are getting into a tough spell.”
Listen to the Tolbert and Lund segment below. To hear Kerr talk about the above topics, skip to the 6:00 mark.