Warriors can’t afford to keep blowing leads as brutal upcoming schedule threatens to derail strong start

The Warriors have long been prone to blowing large leads in the Stephen Curry-Steve Kerr era. When they were great, they almost always stopped screwing around at just the right time to go on a game-ending run. But they’re not that great anymore, despite an impressive 12-5 record going into Wednesday night’s showdown with the Oklahoma City Thunder. 

That record should be 14-3, as the Warriors have squandered leads of 17 and 18 points, both late in the third quarter, in their last two losses. Earlier this year, they coughed up a 31-point lead to the Rockets before recovering to win in overtime. They let the Wizards trim a 17-point lead to five in the fourth quarter before escaping that one, too. 

On Saturday, the Spurs outscored the Warriors by 27 points over the final 15 minutes. Perhaps there was an excuse for this one, as it was a back-to-back and the third game in four nights for Golden State. 

But then they did it again on Monday, when they led the Nets — who have had their own knack for digging out of holes this season — by 18 in third quarter and nine when Curry exited the game for his first second-half rest at the 4:33 mark of the third quarter. 

By the time Curry returned with under eight minutes to play in the fourth, the Warriors were down four. Do the math, and that’s a 13-point swing that Kerr watched happen as Curry sat for nine minutes. It has been well documented how heavily, and largely successfully, Kerr has relied on Golden State’s depth this season, but the offense continues to nosedive when Curry rests. 

According to Cleaning the Glass, which filters out garbage time, the Warriors score just 105.7 points per 100 possessions when Curry sits, which ranks in just the 10th percentile across all five-man lineups and would register as the third-worst offense in the league. 

What made matters worse was Jonathan Kuminga being out for these last two games. The Warriors don’t have many guys who can individually create offense outside of Curry, but Kuminga is one of them, and his ability to just straight line drive to the bucket was a sorely missed tide-stemming option as Dennis Schroder and the Nets just kept scoring on Monday. 

There are some coaches who would bend their early-season minutes principles to get their star back in the game as they’re watching their big lead not just evaporate, but actually turn into a deficit. Kerr is not one of them. You have to wonder if at some point down the line this season, the Warriors are going to look back and wish they’d closed the door on these games, even if it meant stretching Curry a few extra minutes. 

Because things are about to get very tough. Check out Golden State’s next 17 scheduled games that will take them through the next six weeks. (Note, the Warriors will play in the NBA Cup quarterfinals, so they have two regular-season games that aren’t set in stone yet, but they will be against other NBA Cup knockout teams.)

That is an absolutely brutal stretch. Every team on that list — probably outside of the Kings and maybe the Heat (although I wouldn’t rule anything out in this Eastern Conference), is a legitimate conference finals contender. The Clippers have already beaten the Warriors twice. Throw the Sixers’ record out if you are facing them with Joel Embiid and Paul George. 

We’ll know a lot more about whether the Warriors are a real contender come the first week of January, when they could very easily be somewhere near .500, if not worse than that, at which point these last two games they’ve blown would loom pretty large.