For the second time in their last five games, the Golden State Warriors held a lead late in the contest, only to see it quickly evaporate. And star guard Steph Curry, who spoke to the media after the club's 91-90 loss in the NBA Cup quarterfinal vs. the Houston Rockets on Wednesday night, feels the Warriors have arrived at a pivotal point in their season where they must address this troubling trend.
"It's a team trying to figure out who you are," Curry said. "What works, what sets we need to be in. Teams seeling out on our standard pick-and-roll, which I usually can make plays ... If I make that last shot, you might not ask me about the last two possessions. That's kind of the way the game goes."
"When you lose, everything is on full display."
Golden State forward Jonathan Kuminga sank the second of two free throws to extend the team's lead to six points with 3:03 remaining in the game. From that point on, the Warriors were held scoreless and turned the ball over three times. The final seconds of the game irked Golden State coach Steve Kerr, who felt the officials were mistaken to call a loose ball foul on Kuminga with 3.1 seconds left.
Curry had a gripe of his own with the officials from earlier in the fourth quarter, but the Warriors star made it a point to say that any calls made—or not made—by the officials were not the reason the club lost.
Curry instead focused on the Warriors' inability to get anything going offensively.
"The pattern of scoreless droughts down the stretch has to be addressed or else we’ll be a mediocre team," Curry said. "I’ll take responsibility for not being able to get us organized and not being able to finish plays. Ball’s in my hands. I got to make shots.
"But I think we can all address certain sets that can get us into better shot creation-type opportunities. Knowing how teams are going to guard us, especially in the last five minutes. We're talking about it ... Experimenting. That's going to be a defining point of our full season.
"If we figure it out or we don't. We're playing well enough to win most games, so that's a good sign and a bad sign."