by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–If the Golden State Warriors want to be playoff bound they have to step up their game, they’ve lost three in a row at home the latest is a one point loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves by one on Friday night at the O.Com and the Warriors have been struggling a little bit losing four of their last six games.

Mostly on the defensive end, their scoring plenty that hasn’t been much of an issue and everybody knows this is a team with a very strong starting line up. Four of the Warriors just got selected to be part of the Olympic preparation team for 2016. Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, and David Lee, and Andrew Bogut all named for the team earlier this week. Bogut is not American so he can’t be named to the American team but he has been on the Australian team before and he would have a chance to be named again.

This would put the Warriors with potentially five members that are potential Olympic starters or Olympic players, the Warriors have been great on offense even that one point loss the other night they scored 120 losing by one. The problem has been on the defensive end ever since that ten game winning streak they had a couple of weeks go by where they kind of lost their defensive prowess.

Their playing really good defense up until that point then they lost a couple of games for whatever reason their defensive mindset has been lazy they just haven’t been playing hard on defense and they’ve been giving up a ton of ponts and frankly if you watched their game it’s not that their giving up a lot of points the opposition is scoring every single time their not just able to miss.

This is because the Warriors aren’t getting up in their faces and Bogut is playing pretty good defense in the middle around the perimiter their giving up too much space I don’t know why all of a sudden the Warriors are laxed on defense but it’s just whats been happening. Until the Warriors correct it their going to have trouble winning these games.

If they can score with anybody and against some of the lesser teams they would probably be able to outscore them because even bad defensive teams their the lousy teams who won’t be able to score enough to keep up with Golden State. Against the decent teams their going to lose and right now the Warriors are treading water. They could come back and their a good enough team.

The Warriors are having trouble right now, part of the problem might be their just a little worn out, one of the problems they’ve had injuries on the bench with their starting five. Iguodala missed a month’s worth of games and that didn’t help. Their starting five is healthy and their playing great when their in. The problem is they don’t have a deep bench because of all the injuries and that’s really hurt them.

The Warriors gear up for Portland on Sunday and Washington on Tuesday

David Zizmor does commentary on the NBA for Sportstalk Radio