Kurtenbach: The worst Warriors loss of the season shows a team at a crossroads

Let’s start with the good news:

The Dennis Schröder era — if you can call it an era — can only get better from here.

That’s because Schröder’s first game with the Warriors went as poorly as any game the Warriors have played in recent years.

Golden State lost by 51 to the Grizzlies in Memphis on Thursday night, and that final margin might be more flattering than the Dubs deserved. With just under 4 minutes to play in the third quarter, the Warriors were losing 102-50. They were down by as many as 57 on the night.

This wasn’t an NBA game — it was like the Warriors were North Carolina Central playing Duke.

The 51-point loss was the Warriors worst since the Celtics beat them by 52 in March.

Was it entirely Schröder’s fault the Warriors had the brakes beaten off them in Memphis? Of course not.

But this inauspicious start hardly inspires confidence in this bold (yet inadequate) experiment.

The Warriors will try to “flush” this game. There will be no tape study and no discussion—move on to the next one.

And perhaps, after Saturday night’s game in Minneapolis, this contest will seem like a waste of everyone’s time.

Every team is entitled to a dud, on occasion, after all.

But it would be foolish to simply call Thursday’s annihilation a one-off, especially when you consider that it was the first game for a player whose fit with this team has been so roundly and justly questioned.

Because it is so rare for Steph Curry to play as poorly as he did Thursday — he didn’t make a shot from the field — or for Draymond Green to be as ineffective on both sides of the floor that he set an NBA record for worst plus-minus (minus-42) in a game for any player who played 20 minutes or fewer.

It can’t simply be the Grizzlies having a game for the ages.

That accounts for, what, a 30-point Memphis win?

How do we account for an additional 20 points? Surely, we can’t credit Jake LaRavia for that.

I’m on the record saying I like the idea of Schröder on the Warriors. He might be a dribble-drive player on a team that finds such play antithetical, but the Warriors need more of what Schröder offers — ball-handling and offensive aggression. His defensive upside is much-needed, too.

But just as a recently acquired player is required to acquiesce to the way his new team goes about its business, so too must the new team adapt to the way the new player plays.

I’m unsure what we saw on Thursday, but it certainly wasn’t that. Instead, it was clunky at best and mutually exclusive play — Schröder taking a  possession, the Warriors taking the next — at worst. Either this team had too much fun in Memphis on Wednesday (is that even possible?), or this assimilation might take some time.

And let’s be clear: the Warriors can’t afford a long stretch of growing pains.

But what else are we to believe is coming down the pipe after Thursday?

The idea of landing Schröder was that he was the player the Warriors needed right now. What if “right now” turns out to be a few weeks or a month from now?

I heard the NBC Sports Bay Area propagandists suggest that the Warriors are just fine — they’re merely on the wrong side of a hellacious stretch of schedule.

Sure, the Dubs have played some seriously tough opponents as of late — Memphis included — but you let me know when there’s an easy week in the NBA. I’ll wait.

Contrary to what you might think following Thursday’s game, this is the era of parity in the NBA, and there aren’t many teams markedly worse than the Dubs, who, just weeks after being No. 1 in the Western Conference, are now at No. 10 in the standings.

For instance, the next time the Warriors play the tanking Utah Jazz, it’s the first part of a back-to-back where the second game is against the West’s best, Oklahoma City. Your upcoming home game against the hapless Wizards? That’s followed by a game against the defending champion Celtics.

The Warriors need to start playing good basketball as soon as possible. That’s why Schröder was acquired after all.

One game isn’t a viable referendum. Two or three games aren’t, either.

But the Warriors simply can’t wait long to mesh Schröder into the fold of this team and return it to its early-season form. If the win-now move doesn’t win… now, the Dubs could be trying to make another move with a trade asset that isn’t nearly as valuable as he was a few weeks back.

Yes, the Warriors have made it known that they still have the ability to make trades before February’s deadline, and if that includes Schröder, so be it.

I’m skeptical about that.

But if one game can change that opinion, Thursday’s disaster of a game was it.