SAN FRANCISCO — Welcome to basketball purgatory, Warriors.
Or should I say, “Welcome back”?
Yes, the Warriors will participate in the NBA’s play-in tournament for the third time in five years.
They only have themselves to blame for that.
It was all so avoidable, this extra game or two the Warriors will have to play this upcoming week.
And regardless of the outcome of this weeknight mini-tournament that leads into the playoff tournament, it’s all so terribly inauspicious for the Warriors’ fast-fading title hopes (can you even see a flicker?).
This team could not take care of business when the business proved to be the most important.
How does that portend good things for the playoffs, if the Dubs even make it?
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The Warriors lost to the Clippers 124-119 in overtime on Sunday in a regular-season finale that was every bit as intense as a playoff game.
It was a bad loss for the Warriors, who had a four-point lead with just under two minutes left in the fourth quarter, but it didn’t speak to a larger issue. Their opponent was a playoff-worthy basketball team with two Hall of Famers — longtime Warriors foils Kawhi Leonard and James Harden — playing at All-NBA levels. Leonard scored 33 points Sunday. Harden went for 39 points.
No, you can’t freak out about coming out the wrong side of a high-level game like Sunday’s — even if the Warriors (rightfully) hated their late-game offensive execution.
The Warriors’ issue was that they left the fate of their season to Sunday’s game.
Less than a week ago, we were having reasonable conversations about the Warriors landing a top-four seed in the Western Conference and hosting Game 1 of a first-round playoff series — such was the team’s ascendancy since acquiring Jimmy Butler from the Miami Heat at the NBA’s trade deadline.
The Warriors were celebrating and were celebrated for their excellence amid a stretch of truly “meaningful basketball.”
They might have gotten a bit high on their own supply.
Because when the games carried the most meaning, they slipped. The finish line is still in front of them, even after 82 regular-season games.
Again, Sunday’s loss is understandable, perhaps even acceptable, if you squint hard enough.
But Wednesday’s home loss to the San Antonio Spurs? That has proven to be unforgivable.
The Warriors lost their last three home games of the season, with poor late-game execution in each.
After Wednesday’s loss to the Spurs, Warriors star Steph Curry said, “A good team takes care of business the next two [games] and goes from there. We have to prove we’re a good team.”
So what does that make the Warriors heading into an extra game on Tuesday?
We know where it leaves the Warriors: in desperation mode.
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The Warriors were running on empty late in Sunday’s game.
They were certainly not running crisp, effective offensive sets. Curry spent the final minutes of the fourth quarter and all of overtime trying to dribble through three, four, five Clippers like he was challenged to recreate an all-time highlight shot from March 2015.
Defense? Credit to the Clippers’ shot-making abilities, but Los Angeles made four of their five shots in the final three minutes of regulation Sunday, sending the game to overtime, where they took full control.
All the while, Curry (37 years old) was being tossed around like a crash-test dummy while nursing a sprained right thumb, Draymond Green (35) took a hit to the head in the first half and was going head-to-head with Leonard or 7-footer Ivica Zubac for most of the game, and Butler (35) — who failed to score from 8:23 in the fourth quarter until the final minute of overtime — took a hit to the left thigh from Leonard late in overtime that left him limping well after the game was over.
And that wasn’t even a playoff game. It was just a sneak preview of one.
Tuesday brings another preview.
And if this team cannot find whatever form it had a few weeks ago, a third will come Friday in a win-or-go-home game against Dallas or Sacramento.
The Warriors could have avoided all of this.
They could have used some rest, too.
Now, they’ll receive a marginal amount at best.
Green said that the Warriors will be ready for Tuesday’s game: “We’re not senior citizens,” Green said with big patches of gray in his beard. “You train all year for this. No disrespect to the senior citizens, by the way. We love our senior citizens. … But we ain’t there yet, so we’ll be fine.”
Green might not see himself and his team as over-the-hill, but I will say this:
These play-in games the Warriors seem to play every year are, for sure, getting old.
