Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) and Head Coach Steve Kerr are seen on the sideline during the first half of their NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat in San Francisco, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025.
Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
The Warriors are a team in crisis.
“We’re suffering from a crisis of confidence right now,” an angry Steve Kerr said Tuesday after his team’s dreadful 114-98 loss to a depleted Miami team. “You can see it. You can feel it.”
“Draymond (Green) said we’ve lost our soul, lost our spirit,” Trayce Jackson-Davis said.
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“It’s glaring how bad we can be at times,” Stephen Curry said.
This season is devolving into the Warriors’ worst nightmare: a lifeless team surrounding Curry. His brilliance is an island amidst a sea of mediocrity. And no one seems to have any answers.
After jumping out to a 12-3 start, the Warriors have gone 6-15. They are currently 18-18, an even .500, but trending very much in the wrong direction.
After the Warriors were blown out by Cleveland in the final game of 2024, a despondent-sounding Curry said, “Like the kids say we’re very mid right now … just very average.”
But that was before the home court disasters against the Kings and Heat. Welcome to 2025, where being merely “mid” is the Warriors new goal.
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Tuesday’s game was one they wanted, expected and needed to win. They wanted to put the ugly Kings loss behind them, win before starting a four-game road trip, take advantage of an exhausted, undermanned Miami team that had blown a 17-point fourth quarter lead the night before in Sacramento, losing in double overtime.
Instead, it was arguably the Warriors’ worst loss of the season.
They never really showed up in their own building. They shot 14-of-50 from the 3-point line, didn’t get back on defense, didn’t play with energy. Curry had 31 points, and tried to exhort the crowd and his team to show energy, but he couldn’t rally either. By the end of the game, he looked utterly defeated. The fans that hadn’t already headed for the exit offered their critique of the team’s performance with a smattering of boos.
Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr is seen during the second half of his NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat in San Francisco, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. The Heat defeated the Wariors 114-98.
Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
“We feel deflated right now,” Kerr said. “And there’s no room for feeling sorry for ourselves in the NBA, or in life in general, right? We can’t let disappointment dictate our approach to the game.”
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Kerr brought some heartbreaking perspective to his post-game comments. His mother had been evacuated from his childhood home in Pacific Palisades. His high school was burning down.
“It’s just terrifying what’s happening down there,” Kerr said. “Perspective is important. It was a game and we’re disappointed in our effort and the result.”
Kerr was as angry as any could remember him being at a news conference about a result and not about a social injustice. He was unwilling to pay lip service to any bright spots in the dreary game.
“I’m not going to sit here and talk about, ‘Hey, so and so had some points.’ Great. Who cares?” Kerr said. “It’s about us competing and being the Warriors. Being the team we’ve been for 10 years. And not feeling sorry for ourselves.”
This should be a time when the Warriors are taking advantage of a schedule, packed with average teams that are all battling for position.
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“Welcome to this league,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said before the game. “You have the top-of-the-food-chain league, then you have everyone else, and then you have the teams playing for lottery picks. We’re all trying to figure it out. They (the Warriors) are trying to figure it out, we’re trying to find some consistency. There’s a bunch of us in both conferences that are in that same middling area.”
But, recently, it is the Warriors who are playing like a lottery pick team.
“Back-to-back no shows, pretty much,” Curry said of the recent games. “And the hard part is these are winnable games against teams around the same place in the standings.”
The subtext of these terrible losses is — as it has been all season — the wasting of Curry’s brilliance.
Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr is seen during the second half of his NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat in San Francisco, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. The Heat defeated the Wariors 114-98.
Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
“We just saw it a few months ago in Paris, the best of the best, taking over the fourth quarter when everything’s on the line,” Kerr said. “That’s who he is. That’s what he lives for. And so he is really struggling with the emotion of not being competitive right now.”
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The next few weeks are significant. The Warriors first game back from the road trip, Jan. 18 against Washington, is the midway point of the season. Then they have eight of nine games at home, taking them up to the critical trade deadline. And about a week after that they host All-Star weekend, when all eyes in the league will be on the state of the Warriors.
Will they make a trade? Will they get Jonathan Kuminga back from his sprained ankle? Will Gary Payton II and Brandin Podziemski return on the upcoming road trip? Will anything provide a spark?
The Warriors don’t have a lot of answers. The most Kerr and Curry could offer was that they have to fight their way out of this and find their competitive fire.
“We didn’t have a competitive spirit and if you don’t have that, you have nothing,” Kerr said.
“We’re trying to figure it out,” Curry said. “There’s a lot wrong but what are you going to do about it? We have to dig deep.
“It’s frustrating. When you experience winning, you hate losing even more.”
Reach Ann Killion: [email protected]; X: @annkillion
