Barber: Warriors hoping to avoid repeat of last year's sluggish start

OAKLAND - The Warriors outlasted an undermanned Oklahoma City Thunder team in Tuesday night's regular-season opener, but rest assured that not every game will be this easy in 2018-19.

On the other hand: Maybe a lot of them will be easy. At least, much easier than they were last season.

That might sound like an odd statement, considering that 2017-18 ended pretty much the way the Warriors and their fans had envisioned, with Steve Kerr's team spraying carbonated beverages on one another to celebrate their third NBA championship in four years. That achievement was lavishly celebrated at Oracle Arena on Tuesday as the Warriors unveiled their newest banner and received their newest commemorative rings.

But those connecting images - the party at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland in June and the ring ceremony here on Tuesday - obscure much of what happened last season. Because the Warriors' 2017-18 season was anything but easy. It was a grind throughout the regular season, and briefly again in the Western Conference finals when Golden State fell behind Houston three games to two.

The Warriors' confidence in their ability to hit the gas never wavered last season, even as they lost multiple games to lesser foes. But they rarely seemed right - rarely seemed like the Warriors - until the postseason began. Before that, they suffered from an unhealthy mix of complacency and mental fatigue.

In fact, they were tired when the season began.

“Last year, we had the same team coming back,” Steve Kerr said before Tuesday's game. “It was a difficult preseason. Game One felt like Game 41. Lots of guys said that to me.”

Ah, the summer of 2017. It wasn't kind to the Warriors. They had cruised to the NBA title that June, but the league shrank the offseason by a little, and sent Golden State to China for a couple of preseason games. By the time the preseason began, the Warriors never really had time to reset.

They lost the season opener at home to Houston, and lost again at Memphis four days later to fall to 1-2. They regrouped to win 58 games, no small feat. But you remember what last season looked like. It was choppy, ragged. At times the Warriors were downright terrible.

As Kerr suggested, part of the problem was that he and his players had no new puzzles to solve. With only minor tweaks, the same team was coming back in the fall of 2017 to defend its championship. That's not true this time around. I believe that part of the reasoning in signing All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins was to create a healthy challenge.

Anyway, this summer felt completely different from the last. Kerr and general manager Bob Myers encouraged players to get away from the office. And they obliged.

“This offseason, I think people went away more than ever,” Myers said at Warriors Media Day earlier this month. “You talk to other GMs, and their guys are working out. I think it was healthy. This has been four years (of NBA Finals) for a lot of 'em.”

This time, there was no trip to China. In fact, everything in the summer of '18 happened in California or Las Vegas. It was a low-key version of ramping up for the season.

“I like our mindset going into this season better than I liked our mindset going into last season,” power forward Draymond Green said at the Tuesday morning shootaround.

“Why?” someone asked him.

“We just seem more locked in,” he said.

This is how backup guard Shaun Livingston put it when I asked him about the Warriors' mentality after last Friday's preseason game against the Los Angeles Lakers: “Definitely more relaxed. Just guys kind of got that monkey off their back, you know? It's like Coach always calls it ‘house money.' It's like we're all playing with house money at the end of the day. Like, whatever happens this year, I think guys kind of cemented their place and our place in history. And that's a good feeling.”

The Warriors were playing with house money last year, too, but I think it took them a while to internalize it. They came in grinding, and they slogged through a largely meaningless regular season until the stakes got higher. Even the 2018 postseason was more fraught than the previous one.

“It was the toughest thing I've ever been through in life,” Green had said at media day. “That Houston series was so tough. Even the (NBA) finals. People are like, ‘Oh, ya'll swept, that was easy.' That's not easy. I didn't want to think about basketball, about the run. I didn't even want to see the trophy. I wanted no parts of it. I just needed to decompress for a while.”

This was the Offseason of Decompression, and I think it bodes well for the Warriors. Not that it will make everything a breeze. I mean, Tuesday wasn't a breeze. The Thunder fought back to tie the game in the fourth quarter, and the Warriors' lead was two points with 1:50 left.

It's an 82-game season, and there will be lulls and rough patches and perhaps injuries for the Warriors. Now-retired forward David West, who showed up to receive his ring (and well-earned adulation), noted as much before the game.

“The trip to China, this group being together four or five years, it's tough,” West said. “Guys did a good job managing it. It'll be the same story this year. But they'll figure it out like they always do.”

No, it's not that the wins will necessarily come easier in 2018-19. And ultimately, the Warriors can't do better this year than they did the previous year. The goal is to raise one more banner, though I guess the next one would be in the Chase Center in San Francisco. But if all of that does happen, I'm guessing these Warriors will enjoy it a little more along the way.

An NBA season will always be a physical grind. The Warriors are trying not to make it a mental grind as well.