Warriors, still lost at sea
How real are Golden State's atrocious home-road splits?
Good morning. Let’s basketball.
On the Suffolk Coast, Willard Metcalf, 1885
Stephen Curry left the Warriors’ loss to the Pacers in the third quarter sitting on 38 points and didn’t return. He appears to have injured his shoulder and will have an MRI on Thursday. If Curry misses a significant amount of time, the Warriors are in a world of hurt. And so is my spirit, because I really love watching Steph Curry play basketball.
Even given the Curry injury — one that took the Warriors’ best player out of a close game in which Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins didn’t play and Draymond Green had already been ejected with a 1 point, 2 rebound, 3 assist, 6 turnover stat line1 — Golden State’s damning road narrative is baked and set. The Warriors are 12-2 at home and now 2-13 on the road.
Being better in the confines of Chase Center than away from the Bay is not new to the post-Durant Warriors: last year the team had the best home record in the entire league but just the 11th best road record. Last season, the Warriors had a net rating of +1.2 on the road (10th in the league) and +9.7 at home (No. 2 in the league). In 2020-21 — the play-in year — the home Warriors were No. 9 in net rating at +5.1 and the road Warriors were No. 21 at -3. This is a pattern: even relative to the universal nature of home-road splits, the post-Durant Warriors’ splits are significantly more dramatic.
This year, the Warriors are tied with the Cavaliers and Grizzlies for the best home record and are No. 4 in home net rating (+9.9). They have the second worst record (Orlando is 1-11) and No. 26 road net rating (-8.3).
Given the past two years of data, you’d presume that the exaggerated home-road bias for the Warriors — that is that home court means more to this iteration of the Warriors than it does for other competitive teams — is real. Based on how much worse the Warriors are on the road this season than last year or even 2020-21, it stands to reason that the road Warriors are not truly as bad as the stats indicate.
If that’s accurate, then the two questions become:
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