The Warriors are a team in crisis.

“We’re suffering from a crisis of confidence right now,” an angry Steve Kerr said Tuesday after his team’s horrific 114-98 loss to a weakened Miami team. “You can see it. You can feel it.”

“Draymond (Green) said we lost our soul and our spirit,” Trayce Jackson-Davis said.

“It’s blatant how bad we can be sometimes,” Stephen Curry said.

This season is shaping up to be the Warriors’ worst nightmare: a lifeless team around Curry. His brilliance is an island in a sea of ​​mediocrity. And no one seems to have an answer.

After a 12-3 start, the Warriors had a 6:15 lead. They’re currently 18-18, just .500, but the trend is completely in the wrong direction.

After the Warriors were eliminated by Cleveland in the final game of 2024, a desperate-sounding Curry said, “As the kids say, we’re very mediocre right now… just very average.”

But that was before the home game disasters against the Kings and Heat. Welcome to 2025, where the Warriors’ new destination is just “center.”

Tuesday’s game was one they wanted, expected and had to win. They wanted to put the Kings’ ugly loss behind them, win before embarking on a four-game road trip, and take advantage of a depleted, undermanned Miami team that had blown a 17-point fourth-quarter lead the night before in Sacramento and in lost in double overtime.

Instead, it was arguably the Warriors’ worst loss of the season.

They never actually showed up in their own building. They shot 14 of 50 from the 3-point line, didn’t get back on defense, didn’t play with energy. Curry had 31 points and tried to urge the crowd and his team to show energy, but he couldn’t gather himself either. At the end of the game he looked completely defeated. The fans who had not yet made their way to the exit expressed their criticism of the team’s performance with a few boos.

“We feel discouraged right now,” Kerr said. “And there’s no place for self-pity in the NBA or life in general, right? We can’t let disappointment dictate our approach to the game.”

Kerr brought a heartbreaking perspective in his postgame comments. His mother had been evacuated from his childhood home in Pacific Palisades. His high school burned down.

“It’s just shocking what’s happening down there,” Kerr said. “Perspective is important. It was a game and we are disappointed with our performance and the result.”

Kerr was as angry as anyone can remember when he spoke at a press conference about an outcome rather than a social injustice. He was unwilling to pay lip service to any bright spots in this dismal game.

“I’m not going to sit here and talk about, ‘Hey, so-and-so had a few objections.’ Great. Who cares?” Kerr said. “It’s about us competing and being the Warriors. We’re the team we’ve been for 10 years. And not feeling sorry for ourselves.”

This should be a time where the Warriors take advantage of a schedule full of average teams all fighting for position.

“Welcome to this league,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said before the game. “There’s the top tier of the grocery chain, then everyone else, and then the teams playing for lottery picks. We’re all trying to figure it out. They (the Warriors) are trying to figure it out, we’re trying to find some consistency. There are a lot of us in both conferences that are in the same middle range.”

But lately it’s the Warriors who are playing like a lottery team.

“Basically two straight no-shows,” Curry said of the last few games. “And the difficult thing is that these are winnable games against teams that are roughly the same place in the table.”

The backdrop to these terrible defeats, as it has been all season, is the squandering of Curry’s brilliance.

“We saw just a few months ago in Paris that the best of the best take over in the fourth quarter when everything is on the line,” Kerr said. “That’s him. That’s what he lives for. So he’s really struggling right now with the feeling of not being competitive.”

The next few weeks are important. The Warriors’ first game of the road trip, Jan. 18 against Washington, is the halfway point of the season. Then they play eight of nine games at home and thus reach the crucial trade deadline. And about a week later, they host All-Star Weekend, where all eyes around the league will be on the Warriors’ situation.

Will they make a deal? Will they get Jonathan Kuminga back from his sprained ankle? Will Gary Payton II and Brandin Podziemski return on the upcoming road trip? Will anything cause a spark?

The Warriors don’t have many answers. The best thing Kerr and Curry could offer was that they need to fight their way out of this situation and find their competitive potential.

“We didn’t have a competitive spirit, and if you don’t have that, you have nothing,” Kerr said.

“We’re trying to figure it out,” Curry said. “There’s a lot wrong, but what are you going to do about it? We have to dig deep.

“It’s annoying. When you win, you hate losing even more.”

Reach Ann Killion: [email protected]; X: @annkillion