What are reasonable expectations for Warriors’ four-game road trip?

[ad_1]

What are reasonable expectations for Warriors’ four-game road trip? originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Long before the Warriors’ 6-0 undefeated preseason, their blistering 12-3 start to the regular season and their 6-15 tumble down the standings since, a look at the schedule showed when the hard part was going to begin.

After the Warriors blew an 18-point lead in an eight-point loss to the Brooklyn Nets back on Nov. 25, coach Steve Kerr did his damndest to focus on the present while acknowledging his team’s upcoming stretch of games was going to be “daunting.” There were no favors the rest of the calendar year.

The Warriors then lost their next three games and won only four more the rest of 2024. Flipping the pages to 2025 was supposed to be a relief, and at first, it was. Feeling the good vibes of the new year, the Warriors played their best game in weeks by blowing out the Philadelphia 76ers, 139-105. They withstood the Ja Morant-less Memphis Grizzlies without Steph Curry for another strong victory, giving them their first win streak in more than a month.

There wouldn’t be a three-game win streak. The last two games, losses to teams without the opponent’s best player in embarrassing fashion for numerous reasons have brought the Warriors to a new low.

Now they begin a four-game road trip with a .500 record at 18-18, good for ninth in the Western Conference, against four teams that looked to be easily winnable games not too long ago. But at this point, what are reasonable expectations for the Warriors’ longest road trip since the start of November?

“We can’t be frontrunners,” Trayce Jackson-Davis said after the Warriors’ 114-98 loss against the Miami Heat on Tuesday night. “We got to dig in. We got to find our soul. That’s what Draymond kind of said. It was our soul we’ve lost. We lost our spirit. We got to get that back.

“We got to play tough basketball. We got to play with confidence.”

No spirit. No soul. Shots might start falling, or they might keep clanking out. Either way, starting Thursday against the Detroit Pistons, every player and every coach has to look within….

[ad_2]
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/reasonable-expectations-warriors-four-game-203018721.html

Author : NBC Sports BayArea

Publish date : 2025-01-09 20:30:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.