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A loss?

Yep, a loss.

And a deserved one, too.

The Warriors fell to the Celtics 92-88 in a battle of the NBA’s two best teams Thursday, sparking a million tweets and a million hot takes.

Something has to keep you warm in November, after all.

Still, the surprising (and yes, despite what some might say, it was surprising) loss provided some insight into this Golden State team.

Here’s what we learned from Thursday’s loss to Boston:

The Warriors haven’t played a full game all year

Thursday’s game was peculiar in the fact that the Warriors were the team came out of the gates with energy.

Usually Golden State needs a bit of a wake-up call and the opposing team is the one who comes out from the opening tip cooking.

It went the other way Thursday.

But the Warriors did a poor job in sustaining momentum, energy, mojo — whatever you want to call it. Golden State ran out to a 14-point lead in the second quarter they let Boston to whittle down to four points before halftime. Then they blew a 17-point lead after a tremendous start to the third quarter.

Credit to Boston in both circumstances — they counterpunched.

That said, Boston’s 19-0 third-quarter run was particularly peculiar because the third quarter is typically the Warriors’ quarter, and it was, at least for the first half of the frame.

Then the energy waned and Boston, behind the youthful zeal of Jaylen Brown, took control of the game.

While the Warriors never seemed out of the contest, they didn’t provide a counterpunch of their own — they looked tuckered out at times Thursday. That’s not strange — Golden State’s M.O. this year is giving between 10 and 15 minutes of solid effort in the second half (that might be a generous allotment) and that being enough to turn the game in their favor. Thursday, they met a worthy adversary, came out hot in the first half, and then didn’t have enough energy to fill the second half.

The Warriors will need to at least show that they can be a four-quarter team before the start of the playoffs. That’s a long time from now, and frankly, the need to play four quarters is likely overkill — can any team really keep up with the Warriors if Golden State plays three, or even two, solid quarters?

But that underlying truth doesn’t mean that Thursday’s game wasn’t indisputably bizarre. Can the Warriors start strong and leave solid teams in the dust? Surprisingly, we’re yet to find out.

Blaming the refs is a lazy cop-out for a poor performance

Steve Kerr on the Warriors' foul issues pic.twitter.com/yU4KpUdylj — Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) November 17, 2017

Did Draymond Green foul Kyrie Irving with 14 seconds left? No. He didn’t.

But if you want to spend your time whining and complaining about the referees, who weren’t perfect (they never are), in a November game, you need to evaluate your life priorities.

Some have already told me that a Nov. 16 game was the clearest example to date of the NBA being rigged. Given the state of our national political discourse, I’m not sure if I should be surprised such nonsense is so freely spewed. Has anyone ever heard of Hanlon’s Razor? Did InfoWars start a sports section?

The referees might have turned the game in the favor of the Celtics with that suspect call — and it was hardly the first suspect call in the contest — but let’s bring some perspective into the situation:

Are the Warriors going to lose out on anything at all because they lost a game to the Celtics in Boston in February? No. Could they? Hypothetically, yes, they could, but we all know that’s a far-flung hypothetical.

Sometimes referees do a bad job. Frankly, it happens all the time.

Try to take a moment to get a grip, gang.

The center rotation was broken and the solution might have been on the bench

Going back to actual basketball and not wild conspiracy theories against the Warriors: Golden State’s center rotation was broken Thursday night.

The Celtics’ “big men” were always going to pose a challenge for the Warriors — Al Horford, as tremendous as he’s been so far this season, isn’t a prototypical center (perhaps that’s why he’s been so good), and his ability to naturally space the floor, pass, put the ball on the hardwood, knock down a 3-pointer, and rebound at a high clip was going to create problems for whomever guarded him.

The Warriors’ best foil to Horford is obvious — it’s Draymond Green — but in a November game, Warriors coach Steve Kerr wasn’t going to match up Green against Horford for long stretches — playing the 5 is too demanding on Green, even if he’s going against a smaller center. Kerr wants to save that wear-and-tear for June.

So there was no alternative to Green Thursday: Zaza Pachulia started the game well, but he was not a viable play against Horford down the stretch; Kevon Looney, who stood the best chance of any Warriors center, was lost in his four minutes; David West was fine, but that wasn’t a game for him — it was too fast; and JaVale McGee was borderline unplayable. Meanwhile, Jordan Bell was inactive on the bench.

So the Warriors rolled with Green at center as often as possible, and it should come as no surprise that, when Green was at the 5, the Warriors were fine. When he wasn’t, they weren’t.

For instance, Green sat for just over three minutes in the third quarter, with the Warriors up 66-49. The Warriors did not score during his short respite and when he came back in, the Celtics were in the midst of a 13-0 run that was poised to be extended (it would be).

Idealistically, I’d have an alternative for this situation — I would suggest a cocksure remedy for Kerr’s poor center rotation. (Just put me in charge of the team, already…)

But outside of trying Jordan Bell and sitting McGee or Pat McCaw, who was a DNP, it’s hard to see a way the outcome would have changed in this particular area. Horford is a matchup nightmare and the Warriors didn’t surprise me by not having an antidote (outside of Green).

Sometimes you live by Looney and die by Looney…

Steph Curry isn’t a fan of being jammed

The Celtics are an exceptional defensive team, and they showed that on Thursday night, particularly in guarding Warriors’ star Steph Curry.

Marcus Smart and Terry Rozier had only six points combined, but they both stood out as strong on-ball defenders for Curry, who, frankly, had not been truly challenged all year. Even Kyrie Irving looked pretty good.

In the second half, we saw Curry try to get to the ball out of his hands a bit faster, drawing a second defender in high pick-and-roll and giving the ball to the screen-setter (often Green) to re-initiate the offense — not much different than when the Clippers or Blazers tried to trap Curry after crossing the timeline.

But that late-game adjustment didn’t change the timbre of the contest, and on a night when Curry’s shot was off, the lack of offensive impact was jarring.

Nights like Thursday will be rare — you’re not going to find too many teams who can play the style of aggressive, in-your-grill defense the way that the Celtics or Detroit, with former Celtic Avery Bradley (who also beat the Warriors) can, but it’s been the clearest example of how to beat Curry, and ergo, the Warriors, this season.

It wasn’t just Curry, though — the Warriors have always struggled with long teams. Milwaukee and Boston stand out as the two teams that have valued wingspan and team defense most in recent years, and sure enough, the Warriors have struggled against both. In a seven-game series, adjustments can be easily made to counteract that length, but teams won’t come out of their systems for one game out of 82 — even if it’s on national television.

The way you beat long teams is isolation. You take away the team’s advantage of wingspan by not having passing lanes. The Warriors can play that style with Durant and Klay Thompson, but ideally, they want to move the ball, playing right into long team’s hands, and arms, and chests.

The Warriors might have figured this out late, but they rushed their offense in the final minutes — they were thrown out of whack by Boston’s length.

Add in the aggression that the Celtics play with (and were allowed to play with) and you have a strong formula to beat Golden State. Don’t extrapolate it too far, but give credit where it’s due. Curry left a lot on the court Thursday — there are no two ways about it — but it’d be ridiculous to think that the performance against Boston wasn’t an outlier, even against that team.

This is good for the NBA

The game wasn’t rigged. Anyone who thinks NBA games are rigged as part of a grand league conspiracy to create better matchups is, again, a lunatic.

That said, Thursday’s outcome was great for the NBA.

No one should expect Boston to keep this form up, but Thursday’s game showed that they can, at the very least, compete with the Warriors — that’s an improvement over the league’s presumed NBA Finals matchup on, say, Wednesday.

We’re yet to see the Warriors play the Cavs, but what part of last year’s NBA Finals do you think turns around with this year’s Cavs team? How does that series go six?

The Raptors and Wizards, while they both gave the Warriors a game, aren’t real competition out of the East, either. And while Detroit beat Golden State, does anyone really view them as a possible Finals team?

No, it’s always been Boston or Cleveland, and with the Cavs looking like a worse version of last-year’s team, the Celtics were the only team in the East who could provide hope to taking down Golden State.

They provided that hope Thursday. Now we’ll get two or three weeks of discussion about if the Celtics can beat the Warriors in a seven-game series in June. They can’t — I’d take Golden State in five — but the discussion is going to happen anyway, and that’s good for the league as a whole.

The Warriors were nearing a point of invincibility — the Celtics were certainly worthy for a night and knocked the Dubs down. Given Boston’s run of play and cultural cache, people are going to overreact and wildly extrapolate. No problem at all — it keeps the NBA interesting between now and Christmas. What else was going to do that?