ATLANTA — Kevon Looney hobbled down the long hallway Friday night, past the Atlanta Hawks locker room, pausing only to autograph basketballs to two enthusiastic boys before taking a seat in the visitor interview room.
“I’m a little sore,” Looney admitted after the Warriors’ crushing 127-119 loss. “But I’m doing pretty well overall.”
Back pain landed Looney on the team’s injury list when he faced the Hawks on Friday. But this was another must-win road game for Golden State that was already shorthanded.
With Draymond Green serving a one-game suspension this season for 16 technical fouls, Looney felt compelled to lead defensively against the Hawks. So Mr. Reliable struggled through, back pain and all, to extend his regular-season game streak to 182.
“Loon brings it every night,” said coach Steve Kerr. “He’s going to fight, he’s going to be out there … doing the little plays and he’s been fantastic.”
Looney set screens, blocked four shots and corralled 16 boards in a career-high 18 regular-season points against the Hawks, but his efforts alone weren’t enough to overcome the team’s other recurring problems.
With just 11 games remaining in the regular season, it’s clear that the run the team and fans have been waiting for may not come. The Warriors are just trying to avoid the play-in tournament at this point. Their dream of home advantage is not entirely unattainable, but their inability to win away from home sometimes makes that goal seem impossible.
The picture of the Western Conference playoffs is tense, and Looney has been keeping an eye on the situation.
“These road losses won’t help us, I know that much,” he said.
Despite back-to-back losses, the good news is that the Warriors share fifth place in the West with the Dallas Mavericks and can still avoid the play-in tournament all together. It helps that the Minnesota Timberwolves lost to the Chicago Bulls in double overtime on Friday and the Houston Rockets stunned the New Orleans Pelicans.
The bad news is that Golden State is playing six of its last 11 remaining games away from home, where the Warriors have struggled all season. And the stakes seem to get higher every day.
Wednesday’s Warriors game in Dallas has added weight – the tie-breaker is at stake. Before that, they are scheduled to play in Memphis on Saturday, where they were blown out not even two weeks ago, before heading to Houston on Monday.
The Warriors know what they have to do to win on the street. The keys to the game are written with dry-erase pens on chalkboards in every dressing room they settle into for the night, but they rarely find themselves in agreement for a full 48 minutes along the way.
“It’s the same Soundbite,” said Stephen Curry. “It’s kind of a combination of revenue capping, less fouling and basketball rebounding, and all at the same time.”
Easier said than done for this team, that’s for sure. Golden State’s ten straight road damage speak volumes.
Despite their 7-28 away record, the Warriors have a half-full view of the champagne flute this season. Kerr sees promise in the team’s progress over the past two games and has praised the team’s efforts and energy.
“These guys fight,” Kerr said. “I believe in them, I believe something good is going to happen with this group.”
But that silver lining doesn’t wash away the bad taste that recent results have left in their mouths.
“As long as we’re playing right, that’s good, but we still want to win,” Looney said. “It doesn’t feel any better, even though we played hard and we were right there. Losing all the time still sucks.
“But we are building better habits. We’re going in these games, we’re playing against decent playoff teams, so it’s not easy to win, but we still have to figure it out, we have to be able to push through, we have to be able to be on the road to get to the goal we want.”
Source