Golden State Warriors fans come by their belief in the occult honestly. They have been mesmerized by the varied and bewildering sorceries of Stephen Curry and all within his purview for more than a decade now, and no bad moment or game cannot be scrubbed clean within the time it takes for his next 37-foot jumper with one second left on the shot clock to go from fingertip to net. His most strident critics, both of them, believe he should have to play while wearing a spangly black-and-purple caftan with crescent moons and stars and a pointy hat. That's his deal, pure and simple.
Thus, it is a bafflement to them that he and the team he enchants are suddenly trafficking with the Washington Wizards, who we know from our reading are the very antithesis of magic. In the last 21 games, or one fourth of a season, the Warriors with Curry are 6-15, with the latest example being Tuesday night's 114-98 hammering at the hands of the Jimmy-Butler-free Miami Heat. The game was a slow-cold build from the beginning to the point where the Warriors fell behind by 20 with two minutes left; they led for four minutes and never after the first quarter. They are not only 6-15, they are 5-9 at home in that stretch, which means they are 1-6 on the road and about to embark on a four-game roadie against the Pistons, Pacers, Raptors and Timberwolves. This would have been a 3-1 trip at worse in the good old days; now, 1-3 seems like it would be satisfactory given the circumstances.
And what are those circumstances? Well, lack of magic, more than anything else. They'd always had workarounds for whatever happened to ail them (hey, you want analytics, go bother Nate Duncan), and many of them were Curry. Not that he is materially worse this year than any of his other healthy seasons; most of his numbers are slightly below average, except of course for his age. Then again, they're all old, or at least old-ish, as they continue to veer away from the two-tier plan they thought could defeat time.
This, though, is not that investigation either. This is simply noticing that they haven't been this bad for this long in any season since the 2019-20 season which they tried to navigate with a starting lineup of Glenn Robinson III, Draymond Green, Willie Cauley-Stein, Damion Lee, and D'Angelo Russell. For them, COVID was a blessing because it shortened the season by 17 games. This year, on the other hand, looked great for them until it didn't anymore, and while being 18-18 is creditable in the nasty Western Conference, the Warriors used to be one of the teams that made it nasty. For the moment, they are anything but.
That it is taking this much time for the Warriors to stop being a mess is what is unusual. Their last 10 losses have been by an average score of 117-100, and include beatdowns of 51, 30, 18, 17 and 16 points. They look like what the standings say they are: a team of deepest meh.
Is this their version of hell, then? Depends on what you think their hell looks like, and how many games you need to achieve that hell. Hell for the Warriors is the 18 years before they made Curry their centerpiece, when their winning percentage was an aggregate .375. Being 6-15 is a very small sample size of that epoch, granted, so hell seems an overly strident comp. And barring a solution nobody can envision (say, the staggeringly improbable trade for Jimmy Butler that defies logic and suddenly makes them formidable again), this run of deeply Trail Blazer-y results might be who and what they are for the next 21 games. They did this for nearly 21 seasons back in the day.
Let's just put it this way: The Warriors with Curry this year are 13-16. I mean, he's doing the best he can, which is still considerable, and yes, they might likely be 3-26 without him. But sorcerers don't get days off when toads need to be turned into eagles. If that is their 2025 legacy, remember this when it comes to make the T-shirts.
