National Basketball Association

Why the Warriors' blowout loss to the Spurs should seriously concern Golden State

Published Nov. 15, 2016 2:51 p.m. ET

share

facebookxredditlink

Dieter Kurtenbach

There's no need for the Warriors to panic — it’s not April, or March, or even February.

Golden State has seven new players and ornate offensive and defensive systems. While there might have been an expectation that it would all click immediately — that the Warriors would come out of the gate roaring — it’s hardly an astounding development that they lost the first game of the year Tuesday night.

But it was how they lost — and who handed out the beat down — the first of 82 regular season games that should concern the Warriors.

A 29-point blowout loss to the Spurs doesn’t mean that the Warriors won’t jell — they will. No one knows when that will happen, but if it’s any point between now and April, they’ll be in a position to go to a third-straight NBA Finals.

The immediate concerns are obvious — no cohesion, a lack of depth, slacking defense, and being beaten on the boards. But those problems will probably never look as bad as they did Tuesday night, and still, there were moments where you saw the Warriors’ incredible potential flash.

No, it’s the play of the San Antonio Spurs Tuesday that should concern the Golden State Warriors.

The Warriors will probably be the best team in the Western Conference this year — they have far too much talent to not be. The Spurs will probably be the second-best team.

Those things aren’t questioned by Tuesday’s blowout Spurs win.

But Tuesday’s blowout win did raise this question: how large is the gap between No. 1 and No. 2?

The presumption before the season started — and it was fair — was that the gap would be significant. The Warriors would be “light years ahead” as it were.

Perhaps that’s how it plays out — there’s a lot of basketball to play yet.

But the Spurs don’t need a learning curve, and they sure don’t look like they took any steps back from their 67-win form last season.

Kawhi Leonard, the NBA’s forgotten superstar, might have taken another step forward in the offseason — he scored a career-high 35 points Tuesday night and was lights out on defense (as always).

LaMarcus Aldridge looked to play with more confidence and freedom than he did last year. He added 26 points on 10-of-20 shooting.

Patty Mills was stellar, Pau Gasol looked like he had been on the team for 15 years, not a few weeks, and the old guard of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili were professional, as always.

And, like clockwork, Gregg Popovich found another unheralded player and turned him into what appears to be a vital glue guy — Jonathon Simmons scored 20 in 28 minutes off the bench.

The Spurs are going to be right there in the 65-win range in 2016-17 — the Warriors are going to be there too, either by failure or choice. Right now, it looks to be the former.

No matter how high the bar might seem to be, the Spurs are going to be right by it.

Either way, for all the talk about the Warriors heading into the season, it turns out we forgot about the San Antonio Spurs — again.

share

Get more from National Basketball Association Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more

in this topic

National Basketball Association