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The Golden State Warriors have gotten up to an unexpectedly shaky start, now at 3-2 after suffering two losses — one to the Houston Rockets in the season-opener and another to the Memphis Grizzlies within the first three games of the season.
The team has been through lapses of focus, squandering leads in nearly every game and failing to deal damage with those thrusting double-digit runs that usually are good enough to bury a team going into the fourth quarter.
Kerr has been conscious of the way his team has played, despite retaining massive familiarity after bringing the band back yet one more time, but warns the focus would be too massive to keep up for an entire season.
“If I asked our guys to bring the same level of focus right now as I did against Cleveland in June, we’d be done by December,” Kerr said after practice on Thursday, according to Mark Medina of the San Jose Mercury News. “We’d have to find something else to do. All of our guys would be fried and burned out. It really is about developing good habits and building up to the point where the energy of the latter part of the season and playoffs can take over. The energy and emotion will be there. But early in the regular season, it has to be focused on the details.”
Kerr's primary ball-handlers in Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Kevin Durant are coughing up a combined average of 10.6 turnovers per game — more than half of the 17 turnovers per game the team has averaged this season — good for sixth-worst in the league. But while the carelessness is still not fully eradicated, the Warriors have begun to clean things up in the rebounding area in the late stages of the game — an improvement which allowed the team to go on a 10-0 run and pull off the win against the Toronto Raptors.
“That stuff doesn’t require huge energy. It requires focus,” Kerr said. “There’s no way you can bring that kind of energy for nine months. But the focus, that’s where you build the foundation. If you can do that, we’ll be fine.”
The man at the helm warned that the team could coast to wins based on sheer offensive talent, but that is a feature which proves impossible to replicate consistently throughout a playoff scenario.
“Our guys can score at will sometimes. But trading baskets is not a formula for success,” Kerr said. “Trading baskets for us might equate to a lot of regular season wins. But it’s not going to mean anything in terms of winning a playoff series.”
