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Warriors Notes: Losing Skid, Trade Possibilities, Curry, Green

January 8th 2025 at 11:01pm CST by Arthur Hill

The Warriors were hoping to snap out of their long slump Tuesday night against another team in turmoil, writes Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN. Instead they lost by 16 points at home to a Miami squad playing without the suspended Jimmy Butler and are left with questions about how to stop a downturn that began before Thanksgiving.

“When shots are falling, everything’s nice, everything’s great,” Trayce Jackson-Davis said. “We can’t be front-runners; we got to dig in, we got to find our soul. That’s what Draymond (Green) kind of said. It was our soul that we’ve lost. We’ve lost our spirit, and we got to get that back and we got to play tough basketball. We got to play with confidence, stick shots and play hard on the defensive end of the floor, and I think if we do that, we’ll find our way back.”

The Warriors were doing those things early in the season when they got off to a 12-3 start and looked like one of the best teams in the Western Conference. They’re just 6-15 since then amid injuries, rotation changes and a mid-December trade for Dennis Schröder that failed to spark a turnaround.

At 18-18, Golden State is barely holding on to the final play-in spot and is about to head to Detroit, Indiana, Toronto and Minnesota on a tough four-game road trip. Coach Steve Kerr said the team is facing a “crisis of confidence” and needs to play with more energy than it did on Tuesday.

“We feel deflated right now,” he said. “And there’s no room for feeling sorry for ourselves in the NBA, in life in general. We can’t let disappointment dictate our approach to the game. We have to do the opposite. We have to bring more fire. We have to out-compete our opponents when things aren’t going our way. And that was what was most disappointing tonight, was I just felt like everybody was down and we didn’t have a competitive spirit. And if you don’t have that, you’ve got nothing.”

There’s more on the Warriors:

  • Kerr mentioned “personnel” as a reason why his team doesn’t get many easy baskets or shoot a lot of free throws, according to Anthony Slater of The Athletic. However, he declined to answer questions about whether there’s any urgency to shake up the roster before the trade deadline. “Those are questions for (general manager) Mike (Dunleavy),” Kerr told reporters. “I love our guys. I love coaching these guys. I believe in them. I’m going to keep doing that. Those are front office questions.” Kerr said over the weekend that he prefers to see the current roster stay together for at least a month or so.
  • The Warriors need to make a trade “in the worst way” and it may take three of them to fix the roster, contends Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic. He adds that Kerr has already tried numerous lineup combinations, but the team doesn’t show the same fire it has become known for throughout his tenure on the bench and the organization is in danger of losing the culture it has created.
  • Golden State might be shorthanded as the road trip begins Thursday in Detroit, notes Sam Gordon of The San Francisco Chronicle. Stephen Curry is listed as questionable for the first game of a back-to-back due to left knee inflammation. Also considered questionable are Green (left ankle sprain), Schröder (left hip contusion) and Moses Moody (left knee soreness).
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