Stephen Curry is depressed because of how awful this Warriors squad is.

Like many, I have watched a ton of extremely bad Golden State Warriors teams. I was there when the franchise tried to build around Speedy Claxton. The egregious hiring of free agent Derek Fisher. I own not one, but two Andris Biedrins jerseys. So it is from a position of subject matter expertise that I come to you with a harsh truth: this team sucks. We are well past the point of concern and all the way down into the land of despair.

On top of the general malaise, the Warriors announced yesterday that their best players are probably skipping the game – in keeping with this season’s patterns of holding Curry out of back-to-back games (plus some bonus pain for the fans watching from home).

Rock bottom

First, it was the loss of Klay Thompson. By all reports, the Warriors front office thought they could chase a big name star replacement (or at least that was Plan A), but quickly folded when they found the market a bit too cool on Golden State’s assets. Instead, they did a solid job of filling in gaps around Curry and Green with role players, banking mostly on some emergent talent and synergy to carry them to victory. And it worked pretty well through the first 15 games.

Then, it was De’Anthony Melton going down. A role player that was filling a critical role, his loss precipitated a cascade of bad decision options for the Warriors.

It is important to see how despondent Curry was after the last game. Rather than spill a ton of words, please take two minutes to listen to his response when Anthony Slater asked him if this was the low point of the season.

Coming out of this tailspin is going to take some doing. Kuminga is out past the trade deadline, and given the slippery slope that the Warriors find themselves on, he could find this team way out beyond the event horizon.

Recently, Curry talked about the fine line between hope and delusion, and it seems that the team has quickly run into that edge. Painfully.

What comes next? When Kerr was asked about urgency and the impending trade deadline, he pointed back to general manager Mike Dunleavy. It has become exceedingly clear that this isn’t a playoff team. Again, from the wonder that is Marcus Thompson:

The problem is that the franchise has already probed the trade waters deeply enough to know that the available moves aren’t that enticing. Maybe the math has changed, and maybe there’s a depth within this roster that hasn’t yet been plumbed.