The Golden State Warriors had a huge bounce back win against the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night thanks to a vintage 46-point performance from Stephen Curry. The up-and-down nature of this team shows that season could continue as a major rollercoaster.
The Warriors are 7-6 on the season, though it feels like that record doesn't capture the volatility they've experienced through just 13 games. They started off hot with a 4-1 start and won some big games against the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets.
Warriors' early season volatility could continue going forward
However, for all of those impressive wins against good teams, they also dropped games that should have been fairly easy victories on paper against the Portland Trail Blazers and especially the Indiana Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks (minus Giannis Antetokounmpo).
Things seemed to come to a head as the Warriors got trounced by the defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday. The team looked grossly outmatched and it provided a wake-up call that the team sorely needed.
The team responded with their victory against San Antonio. They got off to a slow start but Curry heated up and delivered the goods, having missed three games due to illness and looking rusty in his return against the Thunder.
Curry has delivered these type of performances countless times in his career, but the Warriors cannot rely on him to be sensational every single night. They are going to need to get back to the formula they had during their 4-1 start when other players were taking the weight off the 2x MVP. Jimmy butler has played that role at times and the younger players like Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody have pall proven capable yet without the consistency they or the team would have liked.
It's easy to say everyone needs to play better, but the Warriors are going to have to find some more consistency as the season goes on. Maybe some injuries and Curry's illness threw things out of whack a bit, yet those losses to inferior opponents really sting all the same and could come back to bite the Warriors later on.
This seems like the kind of season where, given the team's older core of veterans, the Warriors will look like a championship team when everyone is healthy and are firing on all cylinders. Yet once injuries or fatigue come into the mix, this team can look very mediocre very quickly.
It is easy to overreact and ride the rollercoaster of emotions that accompany a long season, but if the first 13 games are any indication there may be a lot of peaks and valleys for the Warriors throughout the next six months.