Steph Curry Put Warriors on Notice After Crushing Loss

Stephen Curry issued a strong challenge for the Golden State Warriors as their playoff hopes took a hit on Wednesday night in a disastrous 114-111 loss to the San Antonio Spurs at home.

“A good team will bounce back from it and takes care of business these next two [games] and goes from there,” Curry told reporters. “We have to prove we’re a good team.”

The Warriors have been a good team since they swung the blockbuster trade for Jimmy Butler at the deadline. They climbed from 11th to as high as fourth in the stacked Western Conference. But they have sputtered in two of their last three games to go down to No. 7 with two games left in their regular season schedule.

Curry and Butler did their part, scoring 30 and 28 points, respectively against the Spurs. But they got little help from their supporting cast.

“We know where we’re at,” Curry said. “We know every game is important. It’s been important for the last two weeks. We’ve done a lot to give ourselves a chance to climb pretty high considering where we were before the trade deadline. Then these last two home games, it sucks for different reasons. Houston and then tonight, we feel like were winnable. [We] Should have won.”

‘We Messed Around’

The Warriors messed up big time as they squandered a 12-point lead to start the fourth quarter against the lottery-bound Spurs.

Harrison Barnes, a key member of their 2015 championship team who was discarded after his 2016 struggles to make way for Kevin Durant, came back to haunt them.

Barnes hit the game-winner over the outstretched arms of Butler at the buzzer.

The wild ending was precipitated by three bad turnovers from Curry and Draymond Green, the remaining stalwarts of the franchise’ last four championship runs, inside the final 2:11 of the game.

“You give a team life and give them the ability to make a run, finish a fourth quarter like they did then it’s make or miss at the end of the game whether it’s going to overtime or not and you never want to put yourself in that position,” Curry said. “We did and got bit by it.”

“We messed around with the game and we lost,” Green added. “That’s how it goes.”

Where Will the Warriors Go From Here?

Curry pointed out two key stretches where they lost the game — the start of the second and fourth quarters.

“We just got lax defensively and gave up a lot of straight line drives to the basket,’ Curry said. “We were pretty soft on the ball. They were just driving in the paint, getting to the rim, [grabbing] offensive rebounds or finding open threes and those two stretches gave them life. It gave them the belief that [this game] was worth fighting.”

The Warriors were minus-16 during the non-Curry minutes. A big chunk of that was on those key stretches which Curry said they lost the game.

The Spurs went on an 18-3 run at the start of the second quarter. Then they made a 15-4 run on top of the fourth quarter which cut the Warriors’ 12-point lead to just 92-91 with with 8:28 left.

“They’re an NBA team too. They’re going to take advantage of it and they did,” Curry said of the Spurs, who lost their top stars Victor Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox to season-ending injuries in February and March, respectively.

Now, the Warriors are staring at the possibility of having to go through the play-in tournament to fight for a playoff spot. They need to win their last two games — against the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday and the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday — and hope the Denver Nuggets, Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies do not reach 49 wins.

“We just made it a little harder on ourselves,” Curry said. “We got to win both of them. See what happens.”