Steph Curry hurt, Warriors lose disasterously against the Rockets 104-100

IT'S THE RETURN OF DUNCAN, BEHOLD HIS WORDS COVERING A DISHEARTENING LOSS TO THE ROCKETS!

When I was flying for Thanksgiving yesterday, my flight encountered some severe turbulence somewhere over the Texas panhandle. For over an hour, the plane rocked and shook and briefly fell, children were crying, people started to get visibly wide-eyed. I’ve never really been scared of turbulence — there’s some factoid in the back of my brain that says that no plane has ever actually gone down due to turbulence. I have no idea whether it’s true or not, and actually I do not want to know. It’s my little safety blanket. I’m more annoyed and slightly-nauseated than anything else when the shaking won’t stop. But I’ll live, I’m resilient, it’s just shaking, I’ve been through worse, and I’ll be safely landing soon. Whatever.

About thirty minutes in, the man across the aisle from me pulled out a full Italian sub, opened a packet of yellow mustard, and started messily applying the mustard to the sandwich. This sandwich was generously two feet away from my face in the expansive confines of a Southwest airplane. This man had made the decision that he was going to have this sandwich now, and god help him, it was going to have an adequate amount of mustard on it. He pulled out a little plastic knife and started spreading it, leaving it unsecured on his tray table. What had started as an annoyance had turned into a total crisis. The shaking of the plane wasn’t what I would call a good sign, but I had full faith I was going to get through it alive and in one piece. Suddenly the situation had totally changed and I was trapped in a life-or-death situation.

This is an admittedly-stretched metaphor but since it was so fresh in my brain, I couldn’t stop thinking about the man pulling out the sandwich when I tried to gather my thoughts about the Warriors 2025-26 season. It’s been bumpy, but the team has looked talented at times, and I had full faith in the ability for the well-seasoned Warriors core to pull things out and land safely (I cannot stop with these food metaphors). On Wednesday’s game against the Rockets, someone pulled out a sandwich and now I’m white-knuckling it through a crisis.

As in most Warriors failures lately, the team was able to get out to an early lead, led mostly by Jimmy Butler, who has been just a completely rock solid co-star during the early going. I figured it would be a great night for him after he made his first patented late shot-clock grenade three, and lo and behold, could not have asked for more from him. He would end with 21-5-5 with two steals and zero turnovers, which is a classic Jimmy Butler game and is generally enough to get by.

The Warriors would actually start 4-4 from three, which is great for this streaky-shooting team. The entire first half was connected and flowing basketball — a mode the Warriors can get into and then frustratingly fall out of at a moments’ notice. They depend on Steph and Jimmy for so much, it’s true, but this sort of beautiful game switches on and off constantly, flickering like there’s a power surge. One moment Podz seems like a real point guard, the next there’s a whole lot of limp pump fakes and overdribbling.

But despite the early lead, the Dubs started showing warning signs. Against the Rockets, the rebounding would inevitably become a huge issue. Even without Steven Adams, the Rockets are a dominating rebounding team, long and athletic with an emphasis on crashing the boards on every single play. They’re built to chuck shots, get the offensive rebound, and chuck another shot, rinse and repeat. They shot 39% on the game and it didn’t matter. If you can’t compete with them on the glass, they will dominate the possession game, getting significantly more shots up than their opponent.

Combine that with a feisty defense and you have a recipe to pile up wins. In this way, Kuminga’s presence was greatly missed. Despite his well-reported flaws, Kuminga can actually compete with a team like the Rockets on the boards. Without him or anyone as bouncy and aggressive, the Rockets piled up extra possessions, ending with an insane 25 offensive boards. Clint Capela alone got 8 offensive rebounds, 12 total. As Quinten Post’s number one fanboy, he simply isn’t the sort of center who is going to be able to guard against that.

The other key flaw that started to show during the good parts of this game is the individual, point of attack defense on this team. This has been a running issue and it’s just dooming them to suffer career-high after career-high from flawed guards who are suddenly able to penetrate the paint without much effort. Moses Moody and Brandin Podziemski are excellent team defenders and have their use against certain archetypes of player. But match them face-up against a guard with foot speed and they’ll get blown by every time, even by guys like Caleb Love and Quenton Jackson.

Reed Sheppard is a different caliber of player. Despite not playing much in his rookie season, he went 3rd overall in the 2024 draft for a reason and has won heavy usage for an elite team. He’ll drive and knock down nearly every relatively open three he sees. The only player who had a chance at keeping Reed in front of him was Gary Payton II, who would go down with a sprained ankle in the second quarter. Without Payton, Reed was free to dominate and would end with a career high of 31 points. There are a whole lot of career highs being scored against the Warriors these days, huh.

The wheels came off in the third quarter. After Richard made a tough fadeaway to extend the lead to 14, the Warriors lost their ability to score completely. Another patented scoring drought let the Rockets kick off a 24-6 run that extended into the fourth quarter. When Steph is off the floor, the Warriors continue to be completely unable to score at a consistent rate without absurd luck on contested three-pointers. Hold that thought.

The Warriors fought back a little after Curry returned, but with a sure-blowout turning into a crunchtime slugfest, the Warriors left themselves open to shenanigans. With 3:30 left in the fourth quarter and the game tied, Amen Thompson barrelled at full speed into a fairly-stationary Steph Curry. This was initially (and correctly, by my eye) called as an offensive foul and turnover, but the Rockets challenged. They were rewarded by the play being overturned into a blocking foul on Steph, awarding free throws.

This was inexplicable to me, as the standard for a replay review overturning a call on the floor is “clear and conclusive evidence”. The evidence sure didn’t seem clear and conclusive to me. But when you let yourself get played into crunch time, you leave yourself open to the mechanics of fate and refereeing to come into play. It wasn’t the refs who let the Rockets get off a 24-6 run. If the Warriors had been up 10 like they should have been, this would be a footnote. Instead, the Rockets took the lead.

Podziemski would get fouled on the ensuing play, and miss three (three! he missed two and was given a second chance due to a lane violation, and still missed it!) free throws. The Rockets would not relinquish the lead for the rest of the game, and Steph began visibly limping up and down the court as a result of the previous collision. Disaster.

Now, things are not as dark as they seem. Steph was reported to only have a quad contusion and looks likely to only miss three games, returning next week. With the Warriors’ track record of playing without Steph, that means they’ll be 10-13 when he returns. This is very bad given the hopes for this season, but great comebacks have taken place in this league.

The major, glaring problem is that this team was 10-10 with Steph and Jimmy playing more than a decent amount of games. There’s the excuse of the schedule, and I don’t want to discount that, but the team hasn’t played better after the schedule has let up. Buddy Hield is still missing shots (when he actually takes them), Podziemski is still incessantly driving into traffic, Draymond is still turning the ball over, the team looks incredibly reliant on Steph’s ability to save them in crunch time. I do not trust any role players on this roster aside from Will Richard and Quinten Post, and even Post’s shooting has slumped. The increased rest hasn’t changed the firmament of this team.

Are they just this mediocre? We will see, I guess. Things were already bad, and the universe has unwrapped an Italian sub and begun spreading mustard on it. It remains to be seen whether the universe sends it flying up into our face.