Jimmy Butler didn’t solve all the Warriors’ problems, after all.
After winning the first two games of the Butler era, the Warriors dropped one of their worst losses of the season. In Dallas, in front of a crowd still reeling from the Luka Doncic trade aftershocks, against a team without seven of its best players, Golden State’s fourth-quarter comeback came up short.
Turnovers, missed layups and defensive breakdowns — hallmarks of the Warriors’ slide after their 12-3 start — returned even with Butler in the fold. The Warriors had a golden chance to earn their first winning streak since November, and they blew it in a 111-107 defeat.
Even though the Mavericks didn’t have a healthy center, the Warriors (27-27) couldn’t hit a shot at the rim, going 31-for-58 (53.4%) in the paint and played matador defense on the perimeter. Kyrie Irving put his depleted team on his back with 42 points on 15-for-25 shooting, feasting on overmatched defenders all night.
“Not good,” Steve Kerr said postgame when asked about the state of his team’s perimeter defense. “My mistake was probably not hitting Kyrie earlier and getting the ball out of his hands. I think we did a pretty effective job of that in the fourth quarter. I probably should’ve gone to that earlier.”
Butler logged 21 points, nine rebounds and seven assists to support Steph Curry’s 25 points, but the Warriors shot just 28.6% from 3. Klay Thompson, the former Warriors icon, had it going early and scored 17 overall.
There’s no shame in losing to the Mavericks, but losing to these Mavericks is brutal.
Anthony Davis, who arrived in the shocking Luka Doncic trade, is expected to miss multiple weeks with a left abductor strain. Dereck Lively, Daniel Gafford and Dwight Powell are also hurt, leaving the Mavericks to play five-out for most of the game. Butler, at 6-foot-7, was often the tallest player on the court.
Even as the Warriors dominated on the glass and with second-chance points, their 3s didn’t fall and neither did their layups. Turnovers and defensive breakdowns allowed Dallas to take a 14-point lead in the first half.
The Warriors were so frustrated, Terry Stotts and Draymond Green needed to hold back Kerr from an official during a timeout after he picked up a technical foul.
Irving poured in three 3-pointers in the span of 40 seconds in the second quarter, taking over the game. Without Andrew Wiggins, who’s now a Miami Heat, the Warriors are going to leak against dynamic scoring guards like Irving and Damian Lillard, who went for 38 against Golden State in Milwaukee.
The Warriors had no good defensive options against him. Buddy Hield spent too much time trying to check him. Butler still isn’t in good enough condition to chase him around. Gary Payton II typically doesn’t give Golden State enough offensively to play heavy minutes. Moses Moody is better at sizing up bigger opponents than quicker ones.
Irving continued the trend in a major way.
Moses Moody helped Golden State weather Irving’s hot hand, reaching double-digit scoring for the 12th time in his past 14 games. But the Warriors haven’t been a team that can mount comebacks all year, and they’re now 1-21 in games in which they trail entering the fourth quarter.
After a bizarre missed call on a kick-ball violation, Kerr called a timeout with his team down nine early in the fourth.
Irving hit two more 3s and the Warriors kept tricking layups. Even as Butler bullied his way to the rim for an and-1 and earned foul shots, Golden State’s defense bled points. They never contained the ball, allowing drives that led either to shots at the rim or kickouts to the perimeter.
The Warriors halted the Mavericks’ late-game offense by sending double teams at Irving. Green also made a spectacular rejection on Max Christie at the rim and disrupted another layup.
But Golden State needed more stops.
Irving got a beneficial call on a rip-through move for three foul shots and then sank a contested 3 to give Dallas a late lead.
Curry tied the game by going 1-for-2 at the stripe, but Naji Marshall’s leaner in the paint with 25.6 seconds left put the Mavs back ahead.
With a chance to tie or take the lead, Kerr put the ball in Butler’s hands. But he barreled over Irving for an offensive foul. Although he joined Wilt Chamberlain and Kevin Durant as the only players to score at least 20 points in their first three games as a Warrior, he did so in a loss.
It’s unclear if the Warriors will have Curry and Butler available in Houston on Thursday on the second night of a back-to-back. The team will land early in the morning and figure it out with the training staff from there.
“I don’t know,” Kerr said. “It’s a tough back-to-back. That’s what makes this loss even more frustrating.”