Pacers represent Warriors’ final home court frontier originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
After lollygagging through 16 lead changes in 18 minutes Wednesday night, the Warriors committed to defense and gave the profoundly diminished Grizzlies the kind of thrashing that has become common during Memphis’ lost season.
Golden State’s 21-point victory put its home record at a modest 18-18.
There has been considerable analysis, according to coach Steve Kerr, but no discovery of solutions.
“We haven’t been able to establish that dominance at home,” Kerr said this week. “That’s what’s keeping us from climbing up in the standings.”
Draymond Green doesn’t have a clear answer for the Warriors’ struggles at Chase Center during the 2023-24 NBA season.
“If I had an answer for you, what’s happening, I would 1,000 percent give the answer to my teammates,” Green said.
And now comes the Boogeymen, who have been completely unfazed by Golden State’s home court. The Indiana Pacers, who are in the habit of coming into Chase Center once a year, stomping the Warriors into a fine powder and strolling out like bully kings.
The Pacers are the only NBA team that is unbeaten at Chase. They were the first to expose the demise of Golden State’s once imposing homecourt advantage.
It has been gone since the venue change, from Oakland to San Francisco.
The Pacers are 4-0 at Chase. They have won there with teams good and bad, healthy and holey. Most improbable was their 121-117 overtime win two years ago with three injured starters in street clothes. The Warriors were finished that night by rookie Chris Duarte and a 5-foot-11 G-League veteran named Keifer Sykes.
The last time the Warriors beat the Pacers at home was more than five years ago – at Oracle Arena.
Golden State’s starting lineup on March 21, 2019: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, DeMarcus Cousins and Green. All 13 Warriors – remember Jonas Jerebko? Alfonzo McKinnie? – got minutes in a 112-89 rout.
The Pacers were beaten before they got off the bus, and the same could be said of most teams venturing into Oracle. One opposing head coach told me in 2015 – before Durant’s arrival supercharged the roster – that it was the toughest arena in the league to get a win, partly because of Golden State’s talent but partly because of the building.
Those Warriors went 39-2 at Oracle in each of Steve Kerr’s first two seasons as head coach. That building posed a dual intimidation factor that has not materialized at Chase.
Consider Curry’s comments last month, after the Warriors blew a 15-point lead and lost to the Los Angeles Clippers.
“We’ve been very average so far, so we have to regain that homecourt fear that we have grown accustomed to in the past,” Curry said.
With successive excellent seasons at Chase before 2023, there was a sense that the Warriors moving toward the goal of making it a place visitors dared to venture. They were 31-10 at home in the 2021-22 championship season and bumped it to 33-8 last season. They were a combined 15-3 at home in those two postseasons.
Chase was stepping up . . . until the puzzling regression of this season. The Warriors’ so-called homecourt “advantage” is not unreliable.
“That’s been our staple,” Curry said this week. “We’ve given ourselves a little cushion every season for the last, however long. It’s a challenge that we have to overcome at some point down the stretch of the season.”
Boos bounced off the walls of the arena on Jan. 10, as the New Orleans Pelicans were handing the Warriors their worst home loss (141-105) since a 37-point drubbing in 2007 by the Spurs at the height of San Antonio‘s dynasty.
Responding to the boos at Chase, Kerr said “we deserved it for sure.” Curry conceded that he was “booing our team in my head because of the way we’re playing.”
Since Curry spoke of regaining “homecourt fear,” the Warriors are 4-4 at Chase, with losses to the mediocre Chicago Bulls, the cellar-dwelling San Antonio Spurs and a New York Knicks team missing three starters – games that likely devastate Golden State’s hopes of achieving a guaranteed playoff berth.
The Warriors have more road games (nine) than home games (five) remaining, which might be a good thing. But it shouldn’t be. Not in this league.
“It’s just weird,” Kerr said Monday afternoon. “It doesn’t really make sense. We’ve always been a good home team and it doesn’t mean we can’t start being one now. That’s what I told the guys today. That’s the one thing we haven’t really done this year is control our homecourt. That’s a goal of ours here down the stretch to take care of business here.”
Two hours later, the Warriors were trailing the Knicks by 14 points within the first five minutes. They never caught up.
Though the Warriors recovered Wednesday night, beating the Grizzlies, the task Friday night is far more difficult. The Pacers have the highest-scoring offense in the league, averaging 122.8 points per game and are No. 2 in offensive rating.
This Indiana squad is better than all but one the Warriors have seen since moving to Chase.
But if the Warriors can’t slay the Pacers this time, with all that is at stake, rising in the standings will feel like an overachievement.
