The Golden State Warriors entered the fourth quarter of Wednesday's game against the short-handed Minnesota Timberwolves up by 11 points, quickly extending their lead to 14 points. Instead of salting away another quality road win, though, the defending champions once again fell apart when it mattered most.
After his team's 119-114 overtime loss to Minnesota, Steve Kerr laid into the Warriors for another awful crunch-time performance, criticizing their play on both sides of the ball.
The Warriors were en route to another impressive road win in Minnesota…then the fourth quarter started. @armstrongwinter dives into a frustratingly familiar late-game scene for Golden State.https://t.co/rLj6sOqORi
— Warriors Nation (@WarriorNationCP) February 2, 2023
“I thought we had control of the game and then I thought we just kinda gift-wrapped it. Not to take anything away from Minnesota. They were great,” he said. “They took advantage of our mistakes and our lack of execution, D-Lo got hot and guys made big shots. But we missed box-outs, we threw the ball away, we took really difficult shots. So everything we had done to that point to have control of the game we stopped doing, so we got what we deserved.”
The Warriors committed a whopping nine turnovers in the fourth quarter and overtime, many of the unforced variety. They abandoned their offense once the Wolves got close, mostly relegated to tough jumpers and Steph Curry isolations when they weren't turning the ball over. On several occasions, Golden State simply failed to hold onto the ball, giving Minnesota extra possessions and wasting scoring opportunities.
The Warriors' offensive rating over the first three quarters on Wednesday was 117.7, better than the Denver Nuggets' league-leading mark, per NBA.com/stats. Their offensive rating during the game's remaining 17 minutes? An almost impossibly low 58.3, damning evidence of utter carelessness with the ball and consistently stagnant late-game offense.
“If you want to win, especially on the road, you have to execute. We've probably lost 5-6 games on the road this year just because of a lack of execution,” Kerr said. “We're not good enough to win without executing; we might've been a few years ago. We're not good enough now to win without executing in the fourth quarter on the road. We're trying to correct that, we're trying to work on that, and we gotta do better.”
Golden State won't have to wait long to try, back at it on Thursday in altitude against Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets.
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