USATSI

The Warriors have been wading around in mediocrity for most of the season, but as of late that mediocrity has tumbled into just straight-up bad basketball. For the second consecutive game, the Warriors lost at home to a team that was without its best player, posting a 114-98 defeat to the Jimmy Butler-less Miami Heat on Tuesday. This comes just two days after an abysmal 30-point loss to the Sacramento Kings, who were without De’Aaron Fox. The Warriors are now 18-18 and 10th in the Western Conference.

During the Heat loss, in which the Warriors fell behind by as much as 20 points, superstar Stephen Curry could be seen letting out some visible frustration. After Curry checked out of the game for the final time with just over three minutes remaining, he was wandering around the Warriors bench during a timeout, visibly dejected before placing a towel over his head and taking a seat.

Earlier in the game, Curry could be seen smacking the backrest of a chair during a timeout in frustration, as the Warriors struggled to get anything going against a shorthanded Heat team. After the game, Curry called the back-to-back blowout losses the low point for the team.

“Yeah, I mean, back-to-back no shows pretty much,” Curry said. “The hard part is these are winnable games against teams that, for whatever reason, are around the same [spot in the] standings. …We have nothing to show for it, nothing really to latch onto like ‘Oh, we’re doing this great if we can only…’

“Seems like both sides of the ball are struggling. They’re probably connected, if you make shots usually your confidence goes up, your belief that you can win the game goes up. It helps you play defense. Once you lose that spirit it’s glaring how bad we can be at times.”

Curry finished that game with 31 points and seven rebounds, but received little help from his supporting cast. Only Trayce Jackson-Davis and Buddy Hield joined Curry in double figures for Golden State, combining for 30 points. Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green and Dennis Schroder — the three other starters — combined for 21 points. As a team, Golden State shot just 28% from 3-point range and 40.8% from the field, which isn’t going to win you many games. Especially when the Heat had six scorers in double figures, including a 20-point outing from Nikola Jovic off the bench.

“I can see it,” Kerr said. “I can see it with Steph. He’s continued to be brilliant night after night but at his core, he’s a winner, he’s a champion, he wants to compete at the highest level. We just saw it a few months ago in Paris. The best of the best. He takes over the fourth quarter when everything’s on the line. That’s who he is, that’s what he lives for. So he is really struggling with the emotion of [the team] not being competitive right now. He probably hasn’t had to deal with this since his, I don’t know, his first couple years in the league. He’s definitely struggling with it.”

The Warriors struggles aren’t entirely surprising, as they failed to find another star running mate to pair Curry with. They reloaded their depth this past offseason, but that hasn’t been enough to help with Curry still needing to shoulder a bulk of the offensive workload. 

So where does Golden State go from here? Obviously this team isn’t going to shoot 20% from 3-point range every night, especially since they’ve been around league average from beyond the arc all season. But it’s clear that Golden State may need to make a trade to put more talent around Curry if they want to seriously contend. The Warriors have been pegged as a possible suitor for Jimmy Butler, though it’s been mostly one-sided as Butler has reportedly put the Warriors on a list of teams he’d like to be traded to. The Warriors are reportedly not interested in pursuing Butler, and instead have shown interest in Bulls big man Nikola Vucevic. 

Vucevic would do wonders for the Warriors spacing, and specifically for Curry, who has had to deal with less space than ever since the departure of Klay Thompson this offseason. Vucevic has been having an outstanding season on a confusing Bulls team, and is shooting 42.4% from deep on nearly five attempts per game. And with just a year left on his contract, the Warriors wouldn’t have to commit too much to the 34-year old center.

Vucevic may not be the piece that’s going to make the Warriors a real title contender, but it is a move that would boost the offense in the short term and potentially alleviate some of Curry’s frustration.