The Golden State Warriors lost their third straight game on Tuesday night, crumbling in crunch-time against the Miami Heat. The defending champions are winless on their five-game road trip, with its biggest test—a back-to-back against the Orlando Magic and surging New Orleans Pelicans—still to come before returning to the friendly confines of Chase Center.

Now two weeks into the regular season, the Warriors are searching. Golden State isn't only looking for its first victory away from home, but more importantly the on-court identity and cohesion that's required for a rebuilt roster to prove itself worthy of winning back-to-back titles.

Here are the four biggest problems facing the Warriors during their dispiriting 3-5 start to 2022-23.

4. Golden State's crunch-time offense

Golden State led Miami 107-104 after Curry grabbed a long offensive rebound and splashed a quick-fire triple, giving his team a small cushion as crunch-time began at FTX Arena. It wasn't nearly big enough, not with the Warriors' early-season clutch struggles continuing to plague them.

Golden State scored just two points in the last five minutes of its 116-109 loss to the Heat, its only points coming on Andrew Wiggins' 17-foot fadeaway in the middle of Miami's zone defense. The Warriors went 0-for-6 in crunch-time otherwise, all of their shots coming from beyond the arc, and committed three turnovers.

A similar story unfolded in Golden State's first game on this road trip. After Stephen Curry, seeking a storybook, hero-ball ending in his hometown, clanked a pair of tough go-ahead triples in the final seconds of regulation, the Warriors managed just six points in overtime against the Charlotte Hornets, their lone buckets coming on two pick-and-roll layups from a diving Draymond Green.

Including those tough losses in Miami and Charlotte, Golden State has played four games this season when the score was within five points in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter. The Warriors' resulting net rating in the clutch? An unbelievable -41.1, per NBA.com/stats, opposing dominance most accounted for by anemic late-game offense. Golden State's crunch-time offensive rating is 77.8 and its true shooting percentage is 44.4, both bottom-six marks in the league.

Reminder: As long and arduous as the Warriors have made the clutch seem, they've still played just 17 total minutes under that duress in the season's early going. Sample size always matters. Curry and Klay Thompson, for instance, definitely won't combine to shoot 13.3% overall and 9.1% from three in high-leverage moments over the season's remainder.

Keep an eye on the process of Golden State's crunch-time offense, though, even as shots begin to fall with more regularity. Apart from high ball screens and isolations for Curry, the Warriors' offense—even with Jordan Poole on the floor for Kevon Looney—has been debilitatingly stagnant so far with games on the line.

3. Three-point shooting

Thompson deserves more leeway from national media and even local fans than he's currently being given. The last time he played 5-on-5 before finally scrimmaging with his teammates a week prior to training camp was in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. A fully healthy summer of skill work and strength training isn't close to the same thing as full-tilt basketball against the best players in the world.

Thompson's ramp-up toward a typical minutes load has only complicated his acclimation further. He's eclipsed 30 minutes of playing time in Golden State's past two games, though, and scored a season-high 19 points in Tuesday's loss to the Heat.

Thompson, basically, is bound to be better from here as his legs catch up to rigors of the 82-game grind. Good thing, too, because his inability to hit shots is dragging down the Warriors' offense.

No player in the league is launching more catch-and-shoot threes per game than Thompson's 8.1, per NBA.com/stats. But he's connecting on a putrid 26.3% of those attempts, by far the worst accuracy among players averaging five such tires.

Poole is off to an uncharacteristically slow start from three, too. He's 6-of-23 on pull-up triples right now, good for 26.1% shooting—dead last among players who have matched or exceeded that volume, per NBA.com/stats. Poole is shooting 10 points better on spot-up long-range tries, but league-average catch-and-shoot efficiency isn't what we've come to expect from a player who hit 45.6% of those attempts during Golden State's title run.

Incredibly gifted as they are, Thompson and Poole aren't Curry. Two-week blips of bad shooting shouldn't be too shocking, especially considering context of the former's preparation for 2022-23 and the latter's new status as undisputed leader of the Warriors' struggling second unit.

Thompson and Poole can make far more difficult shots than this.

Just those sharpshooters connecting on good looks, though, would go a long way toward Golden State ranking better than 20th with 34.6% team-wide shooting from deep.

2. Defensive communication and execution

Steve Kerr was pleased with his team's defensive fight and overall competitive edge against Miami, a step in the right direction after the Warriors clearly lacked intensity during losses to the lottery-bound Hornets and Detroit Pistons. But even increased edge and focus didn't keep Golden State from making some of the same defensive mistakes that have plagued this team during its rough start on that side of the ball.

Thompson got caught ball-watching on the possession below, inexplicably turning his head from one of the league's most dangerous shooters in the strong-side corner.

No team in basketball should be more comfortable defending split cuts and off-ball slips than the Warriors. Those actions are so en vogue across the league specifically due to Golden State”s influence.

Andrew Wiggins is a step late switching onto Max Strus here anyway, yielding an easy layup.

Even Draymond Green wasn't immune from simple defensive errors.

Watch him frantically looking for Jimmy Butler as Miami's star makes a canny cut to the strong-side dunker spot with Kyle Lowry running pick-and-roll up top.

Golden State's starters, to be clear, aren't their team's problem defensively, a reality born out by the eye test and numbers alike. But the suffocating defense that barely made mistakes and almost always covered them up during last year's playoffs has nevertheless come only intermittently for the Warriors' regulars, with Thompson, Curry and Wiggins especially prone to basic gameplan and schematic breakdowns.

No NBA defense is infallible. Still, extra onus falls on Golden State's starters to set an example of engagement, communication and execution on that end this season considering how much turnover this team experienced in the bottom half of the rotation.

Eight games in, that blueprint for defensive success has been too hit or miss for the Warriors.

1. James Wiseman and the Warriors bench

Kerr admitted it again after Tuesday's game. He's still trying to come up with optimal player and lineup combinations off the bench, a task made more difficult by the ongoing absence of key reserve guard Donte DiVincenzo and a roster that goes 11-deep with viable rotation players—even before accounting for two-way player Ty Jerome, a personal favorite of Kerr's who's acquitted himself relatively well when pressed into action on Golden State's road trip.

There's one constant across the Warriors' immense struggles to find workable reserve units, though: James Wiseman. Golden State's net rating is -14.9 with him on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass, and even the most favorable lineup configurations paint Wiseman as an abject negative on both sides of the ball.

Units featuring Curry, Green and Kevon Looney boast a gaudy +20.6 net rating. Replacing Looney with Wiseman alongside the Warriors' two-way pillars results in a -15.8 net rating, according to Cleaning the Glass, an incredible discrepancy of 36.4 points per 100 possessions.

Again, that sample size is small, and Wiseman alone is hardly to blame for Golden State's sweeping bench issues. He's also made undeniable strides this season as a pick-and-roll dive man, and fared well at times against Miami when switched onto Kyle Lowry and Jimmy Butler in the third quarter, a good way to maximize Wiseman's physical gifts and minimize his impact as a back-line defender.

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Related: Opponents are shooting 69.7% against Wiseman at the rim, per NBA.com/stats, fifth-worst in the league among bigs challenging at least 4.0 attempts per game.

There's no denying what all empirical evidence suggests. Wiseman's lack of experience and understanding functioning in high-level team concepts is really hurting the Warriors on offense and defense. Would Kerr dare risk Wiseman's confidence by switching his current role with Jonathan Kuminga's, sticking him to the bench as Golden State's 11th man and committing to small-ball with reserves?

It's certainly worth a try given the Warriors' labors with Wiseman on the floor, not to mention Kerr's increasingly short leash with the third-year big man of late.