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If all the games have felt the same, if the Chase Center crowd has been more mumbling than rumbling, if the effort doesn’t seem to be dialed up to 11, it’s not a coincidence.
The Warriors are the first to admit that these are the dog days — the section of the NBA calendar when it’s just a little tougher to get up for regular-season action.
Still, the Warriors have won nine of their last 13 games. Tuesday night’s blowout over the short-handed Blazers was perhaps the best Golden State has looked during this stretch. The 119-97 victory pushed the Warriors to 22-19 at the halfway mark and inched them just a little closer to the Feb. 5 trade deadline, when the fogginess starts to come into focus.
“The dog days are amongst us,” Jimmy Butler said in the locker room after the 119-97 victory over Portland.
Steve Kerr, the head coach who has played, coached, broadcast, or been an executive in the NBA almost every year since 1988, is familiar with the ebbs and flows of the schedule. He has mentioned the term “dog days” multiple times this week, defining it as the stretch from January to the mid-February All-Star break.
“Then, once you come out of the break, there’s a renewed sense of energy,” Kerr said.
Of course, the dog days don’t apply only to the Warriors, but they’re likely more relevant to veteran teams that have climbed the mountain before. The reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder just went through a 6-6 rough patch. The Knicks, who reached the conference finals last season, recently lost five of seven.
This is the time of the season where some of the best teams let go of the rope a bit. Teams don’t always play their sharpest brand of ball in the weeks after the holidays.
Asked about the concept at the podium, Draymond Green widened his eyes. He grinned and nodded profusely before a reporter could finish the question.
“What it is, for those who don’t know, is you can’t quite see the beginning of the season — it was too long ago,” Green said. “Can’t quite see the end — that’s too far away. The All-Star break is also just a little too far. And those make the dog days for you. We’re in them. Got to find a way to get wins in them, though. But they suck. They suck.”
Green remembers his head spinning during the dog days when he was starting out. He imagines a rookie like Will Richard is probably feeling the same way right about now.
After the Warriors’ blowout loss to Atlanta on Sunday, Green evacuated the Chase Center as quickly as he could. He made sure to tell his teammates he wasn’t mad or upset, he just needed a break. The arena felt, he said, like a casino or jail.
“Early on in your career, you don’t really know,” Green said. “You just know it’s a little harder at the time. And you want to go to the gym a little bit less that day. The walls start to close in on you a little bit more.”
Butler, the 15-year veteran, is likewise no stranger to the dog days.
“Well, it’s always a blessing to be able to play basketball in the best league in the world,” he said. “So I don’t forget that. But then, I think, anywhere from, like, after Christmas, January, all the way up to the All-Star break, it gets really repetitive. I think you just got to put your head down, get through it, compete, try to win as many games as you can.”