Golden State Warriors: Five takeaways from the first six games

4. The Warriors are thin on playmakers and shooters

The beauty of Stephen Curry is unlocked when he can move off-the-ball. Defenders have to track him through waves of cuts, screens and feints. Give him an inch of airspace, and he can turn a pass into a 3-pointer in no time. That off-ball threat bent defenses throughout the Warriors’ title runs, opening up space for the rest of the team to score.

This team is not experiencing the benefits of this because they don’t have anyone to get Curry the ball. Draymond Green is the only playmaking passer on this team other than Curry, and he missed the team’s first four games. Players such as Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Oubre Jr. do not have the passing chops to run an offensive play and also keep an eye out for Curry popping open.

The flip side of the coin is that those players are not spacing the floor adequately on offense, either. Therefore when Curry is on-ball, he has restricted airspace with which to work with. While the bench has a few shooters it can plug in, they are limited in other areas; players such as Damion Lee and Mychal Mulder take things away even as they bring floor-spacing. No bench players bring playmaking and creation to the table. As the season goes on, Draymond Green will need to be the answer to raise this team’s offensive ceiling.

5. Long season, but not a playoff lock

For those listening closely, the 0-2 start to the NBA season was expected for the Golden State Warriors. They played the new-look Brooklyn Nets on opening night, the Milwaukee Bucks on Christmas Day. Without Klay Thompson and with a new cast of characters around Stephen Curry, the team was always going to start slow. Add in Draymond Green missing the first four games, and a 2-2 start to the road trip was all anyone expected.

The shocking nature of the two losses — by 26 and 39 points respectively — and their placement at the very start of the season, on national television, all combined to sound alarms a bit prematurely. This group should improve as the year goes on, perhaps more than most, and barring injuries should look better in a month or two than they do now.

That being said, this team has the second-worst point differential in the Western Conference, with an expected record of 1-5. Meanwhile many of the teams they are supposed to jockey with for the final few playoffs berths — the Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans, for example — are off to much better starts. The only two teams that look to certainly finish below the Warriors are the Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder. Passing everyone else will be a fight.

Gone are the days of guaranteed contention, of the benefit of the doubt, of a Warriors team that hummed from continuity and elite talent. This is a group that will need to scrabble its way to wins, and it will need more incandescent nights from the baby-faced assassin Stephen Curry to get there. Yet the bright spot of James Wiseman, regression to the mean for Kelly Oubre Jr. and the return of a healthy Draymond Green all bode well for the future.

It is a long season, and the Warriors are not out of anything just yet.