Steve Kerr called out the shorthanded Golden State Warriors after their loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
SAN FRANCISCO — The Golden State Warriors’ fifth straight loss certainly wasn’t hard to see coming. They played without an injured Stephen Curry and suspended Draymond Green on Thursday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder, falling 128-109 in another dispiriting performance that calls this team’s lack of scoring punch and offensive dynamism into even greater question.
The Dubs’ blowout loss would’ve been even worse if they didn’t so easily exploit the Thunder’s biggest weakness. Golden State pulled down 20 of its own misses on Thursday, good for a 36.4% offensive rebound rate comfortably better than the team’s fourth-ranked season-long mark. Oklahoma City, meanwhile, entered the game 29th in defensive rebounding rate, surrounding lithe rookie center Chet Holmgren with four guards in the starting lineup and not playing any traditional bigs off the bench.
If there’s a silver lining here for the Warriors, it’s that wholesale offensive struggles without Curry and Green didn’t effect their tenacity and commitment on the offensive glass. After the game, though, Steve Kerr made clear that mindset didn’t necessarily extend to the other side of the ball, where Oklahoma City put up a gaudy 128.0 offensive rating.
“We got to be grittier. We got show more spark and energy defensively. We got to put up a better fight. It just felt like they got anything they wanted. We had a lot of miscommunications on pick-and-roll coverages,” he said. “Anytime you’re in a rut like this—we’re obviously in it right now, five losses in a row. So when you’re in that state there’s only one way out, and that’s to dig your way out of it and you got to fight and compete, and that’s what we have to do.”
The Thunder put as much pressure on defenses as any team in basketball, leading the league in drives, spacing the floor with five shooters and incessantly running varied ball-screen actions with different personnel. That’s an especially difficult dynamic for Golden State to deal with absent Green, not just one of the league’s best switch defenders, but a preternatural helper and constant communicator who regularly puts out fires sparked by teammates’ miscues.
Green is out for four more games, though, and the Thunder are back at Chase Center on Saturday night. Maybe more grit and fight defensively is all the Warriors will need to have a chance at finally breaking their losing streak. Potentially without Curry as well with Klay Thompson’s struggles reaching rock bottom, though, it might take a truly herculean defensive effort for Golden State to avoid back-to-back losses to Oklahoma City.
