Stephen Curry made all seven of his free throws Wednesday night. Golden State made eight of its 36 three-point attempts. That was the basic arithmetic of a 127-105 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, and it left the Warriors needing far more from the rest of the offense than Curry’s 23 points could provide.
The Warriors opened their regular season at Crypto.com Arena with a competitive first quarter. Golden State’s offense looked functional early enough, trailing 34-33 after the first quarter. Then came 19 points in the second and 16 in the third. Los Angeles scored 32 and 36 in those periods, respectively, and led 102-68 entering the fourth.
Golden State’s 37-point final quarter improved the score without reopening the game. The late production is worth noting because it demonstrates that the Warriors could still generate offense in stretches. It does not erase the empty middle, when the Lakers created the separation that mattered.
The long-range numbers were a major part of that separation. The Warriors made eight threes for 24 points; the Lakers made 11 for 33. That is a nine-point difference from beyond the arc, while Golden State also took eight more attempts there and received little return. A 41% overall shooting night—38 makes in 92 attempts—made those misses harder to absorb.
Curry’s individual performance was productive without enough collective offense around it. He scored 23 on 7-for-15 shooting, made 2 of 7 threes and added two steals. He had one assist. Draymond Green supplied eight assists, but his own scoring line was two points on 1-for-4 shooting, along with four turnovers. De’Anthony Melton did not score in 21 minutes.
That is not an argument that every possession needed to end with Curry shooting. It is an argument that Golden State needed more players converting the possessions Green and Curry helped organize. The offense could not rely on one primary scorer, one distributor whose scoring was absent and a perimeter group that collectively missed 28 threes.
The quarter-by-quarter collapse makes the point more clearly than the final margin. After the Lakers edged the Warriors by one in the opening period, Golden State’s 19 points in the second gave way to a 16-point third.
Los Angeles kept producing from several sources: Luka Dončić finished with 28 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, Austin Reaves scored 23, and Walker Kessler went 12-for-12 from the field for 26 points and nine rebounds. The Lakers finished 46-for-81 overall.
Golden State did find meaningful contributions outside Curry. Yaxel Lendeborg, making his NBA debut, scored 12 points on 5-for-11 shooting, collected three rebounds and two assists, and committed no turnovers in 29 minutes. Brandon Williams scored 14 points, made all seven of his free throws, grabbed four rebounds and recorded three assists.
