It took seven lackluster games for Steve Kerr to identify the historical doppelgänger for this season’s Warriors: the 1998 Chicago Bulls.



He first made the comparison in Los Angeles back in late October, during one of his more blunt media sessions. The Warriors had stumbled out to a 4-3 start. A day earlier, they had 26 turnovers in a home loss to the Pistons. Kerr fumed.



“Honestly, it’s about not snapping right now,” he said then. “I want to snap.”



That’s when he brought up those 1997-98 Bulls, the third and final title team of that second three-peat, employing Kerr as a bench shooter. That season, they were gassed and unmotivated after two long, successful trudges into mid-June. They opened with a sputter.



“Everybody was fried,” Kerr said. “Started out 8-7 and we were having all these team meetings. It feels exactly the same (right now).”



More than three months later,...