Warriors start flat, stay flat, end flat, lose

Ugly.

To put it bluntly, the Golden State Warriors had no excuse to lose to the Miami Heat on Tuesday night. The Warriors were well-rested: they were playing their sixth consecutive game at home, they didn’t play on Monday, and you could argue that they didn’t play on Sunday either, when they barely showed up to get run off the court by the Sacramento Kings.

The Heat, on the other hand, not only played on Monday, but played a double-overtime affair that didn’t end until late in the night. And they were playing without Jimmy Butler, who has been suspended by the team.

But the Warriors didn’t care whether or not they had an excuse. They were intent on losing by any means necessary, and so lose they did.

Things started well on the defensive end of the court, with the Warriors immediately putting the clamps on Miami’s offense. Unfortunately, the Dubs’ offense was flatter than flat. While they were forcing bad shots and turnovers, they were settling for bad shots and making perplexing decisions on that end of the court.

The game slowed to a grind, which played into Miami’s hand. Even though Steph Curry had a little flurry, the Warriors trailed 29-23 after one.

They were somehow even colder to start the second quarter. No one could find the basket, until eventually Curry put a few shots in the hoop. At one point, with the Warriors trailing 42-29, Curry had shot 5-for-10 from the field ... and his teammates had combined to shoot 6-for-27. Curry almost singlehandedly started to make the score respectable, before Miami ran away with it again. At the half, the Warriors trailed 61-48, with Curry the lone bright spot with 20 points.

The second half started ominously, with Draymond Green not returning o the court until about 30 seconds into the action. Miami stayed in control, but then Golden State got a burst from an unexpected source: starting center Trayce Jackson-Davis, who started to take over the game. Even with Curry on the bench, the Warriors got back into the game, and trailed just 84-78 entering the final frame.

For a few seconds, it looked like they were going to make it over the hump. They came out in the fourth quarter with a fantastic defensive effort, and Curry again caught fire. A few minutes in, the Miami lead had shrunk to a single point.

And then the Warriors forgot how to score. The Heat rattled off a 27-8 run, which took us well into garbage time, and made the fourth quarter almost entirely uncompetitive. As the Warriors starters sulked on the bench, the buzzer rang, signaling a 114-98 Heat victory.

Curry finished with a game-high 31 points, though for the second night in a row he had four turnovers without a single assist. Jackson-Davis added a season-high 19 points on 9-for-12 shooting, but Buddy Hield, who needed 12 shots to score 11 points, was the only other Warrior to score in double figures (Miami, meanwhile, had six players in double figures).

The Heat shot 40.0% from three-point range, and earned 17 shots at the free throw line, while the Dubs shot just 28.0% and had a paltry five attempts from the charity stripe. Curry went 8-for-17 from distance, but his teammates combined to shoot just 6-for-33 from beyond the arc.

Golden State fell back to .500, and will now hit the road for a difficult four-game trip. Things ain’t pretty, folks.