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The regular season has come to an end for the defending champion Golden State Warriors and not only do they not boast the top seed for the first time in four seasons, but they've failed to reach the 60-win mark, which many thought a given with the current roster constructed.
The Warriors finished the season in a 7-10 stretch, showing just how vulnerable they can be without their stars in play. During the stretch, the team only had Stephen Curry for 25 total minutes — spelling a nightmare for a team heading into the postseason locked into the No. 2 seed in the West.
Yet Kevin Durant wouldn't make much of it, noting the inflated results of this narrative.
“I just feel like there's been so much movement in our lineups,” Durant said, according to Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “We let that take a toll on us a bit. We should've just kind of pushed through it. I felt like it killed the morale a bit… Weird finish to the season. Hopefully that mojo doesn't come with us into the playoffs.”
Durant's point has some validity — it hasn't been just the loss of Curry that's affected the team, but the lack of stability, while he was absent for a vast majority of the 17-game end-of-season stretch, Durant missed six of those games, Klay Thompson missed eight, Draymond Green missed four, and Andre Iguodala missed eight — forcing Steve Kerr to make do with what healthy pieces he had.
Kerr was forced to engineer a lineup with none of his usual starters, which brought surprise fruits to the likes of the well-traveled Quinn Cook, the Warriors' starting point guard entering the playoffs while giving playing time to big men Jordan Bell and Kevon Looney, who could see valuable postseason minutes in the first round.
While there is legitimate concern about heading into the next stage that is the postseason with such a poor string of games, the optimism remains with several days of rest before the real test begins.
