Does Warriors' surprise loss signal trouble for season?

OAKLAND - Ever since Kevin Durant signed with the Golden State Warriors back in July, the overwhelming expectation both inside and out of the NBA is that it's a mere formality that this team will be lifting the Larry O'Brien Trophy as NBA champions next June.

Then came Tuesday night, and Golden State's season-opening game against the San Antonio Spurs here in front of a sellout crowd at Oracle Arena. Facing a Spurs team missing starting guard Danny Green, out for the first few weeks of the season with a quad strain, this was expected to be a celebration of a comprehensive victory and a harbinger of the destruction the Warriors would bring to their future opponents.

Instead, the Warriors received a comprehensive butt-whooping, as the Spurs came away with a 129-100 victory in front of a shell-shocked crowd that began filing out of the arena with several minutes left in the game.

As the Warriors walked the first steps down the path of the 2016-17 season, they quickly learned they would not be striding down easy street.

“It's a slap in the face,” Durant said. “It woke us up a bit.”

It's always dangerous to overreact to one game, and particularly the opening game of an 82-game regular season that spans six months. At the same time, dismissing a loss that illuminated all the Warriors' potential weaknesses would be equally foolish.

Those potential Warriors weaknesses - defense, rebounding and bench production - all were exploited by the Spurs to great effect Tuesday night, and teams throughout the league will now try to replicate the Spurs' blueprint.

Reproducing some of what the Spurs achieved will be far easier said than done. Most teams, for example, don't have two players like Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge. Leonard has been a popular MVP pick heading into this season and looked every bit of one Tuesday night in scoring 35 points while shooting 15-for-15 from the foul line to go with five rebounds, three assists and five steals.

Aldridge, meanwhile, looked like a man among boys inside, scoring 26 points and grabbing 14 rebounds - including an absurd eight offensive boards, which equaled Golden State's team total.

Similarly, there won't be many nights where the Warriors will be outscored by 15 points from the 3-point line, as they were Tuesday night. This team simply has too many talented shooters to go 7-for-33 from 3-point range on a regular basis.

What can be replicated against the Warriors, though, is attacking the glass at both ends, and attacking them both at the rim and in transition. Make no mistake: Golden State would trade Andrew Bogut and Harrison Barnes for Kevin Durant and Zaza Pachulia - which is essentially what Golden State did this summer - 100 times out of 100. But what's equally true is that Pachulia isn't the same level of player as Bogut at center, and the Warriors felt his loss Tuesday.

Pachulia oddly struggled with his timing going for rebounds on multiple occasions, jumping too early and then losing the ball to an opponent for what often would turn into an easy putback. Just as glaring was the lack of energy and effort across the roster throughout the game. The Warriors were repeatedly outhustled for loose balls by the Spurs, thwarting the good defensive possessions they did have by allowing San Antonio extra shots.

“If we don't close out the possession with the first stop, it's pointless,” Golden State forward Draymond Green said. “It also stopped our fast break, which is the way we want to play. We've got to rebound the basketball … 20 offensive rebounds (allowed)? That's horrible. That's 20 times we didn't get up on the break.”

At times, it looked as if Golden State simply expected this game to go their way - they expected shots to fall, rebounds to come to them, and the Spurs to miss shots. But against a good team like San Antonio, expecting results isn't good enough, no matter how much talent a team possesses.

Golden State learned that the hard way Tuesday, getting embarrassed on its home court on a night scheduled for the celebration of the ridiculous talent this franchise assembled this summer. Instead, the rest of the basketball world laughed with glee as the Warriors stumbled and bumbled their way through a game against the Spurs' typical and seemingly timeless display of clinical basketball.

The Warriors have obviously built an offensive juggernaut by teaming Durant with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, and it won't be often that this team struggles to shoot the way it did Tuesday night. But if the Warriors are going to fail to bring the requisite effort defensively and on the boards, they're going to have a much harder time than anyone anticipated this season.

The loss did not define the Warriors' season, nor did it end it. What did perish, though, was any notion that 2016-17 will be a casual walk to a June coronation. After a a 48-minute cold shower, Golden State's work has clearly just begun.