For these Warriors, the road to respectability is filled with challenges

We knew this was going to be a season of change for the five-time defending Western Conference champs. New home across the Bay; no Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, or Shaun Livingston; no Klay Thompson for most of the year; desperate roster machinations that left them hard-capped. As coach Steve Kerr put it, the Warriors would need to get reacquainted with the "real NBA."

Even so, the velocity with which their new reality hit was pretty staggering. They got shellacked by the Clippers in their Chase Center opener (somewhat understandable, if dispiriting) and then got bludgeoned even more emphatically by the stripped-down Thunder two days later (less defensible). The Warriors were outscored by 47 points in those first two games, which still fails to represent how comprehensively they got outplayed.

They steadied the ship somewhat with a convincing win Monday over the Pelicans, but it's hard to put too much stock in a game against a team that was missing three starters, including its two best players. Red flags are still unfurling all around these Warriors. They have the league's worst defensive rating, and it's abundantly clear that whatever propulsive force once sent them hurtling light-years ahead of the rest of the league has yanked them back down to earth, where they've crash-landed in a burbling ocean of schadenfreude. Emergency aid is still a long way off. Can they pull themselves out of the wreckage?

While the early indications aren't promising, Monday's victory at least provided a dash of optimism and some semblance of a road map. For one, with Kevon Looney and Willie Cauley-Stein still sidelined due to injuries, Draymond Green manned center while Jordan Poole replaced Marquese Chriss in the starting lineup. The resulting four-out configuration gave the starters some much-needed offensive breathing room and took one of the team's most dismal defenders out of the fray.

That look won't work against every team, but when facing an opponent playing small-ball fours and unthreatening centers (the Pelicans started Jahlil Okafor), the Warriors should absolutely go back to it. Green had by far his best game of the season, and in 16 minutes with him at the five, Golden State outscored New Orleans by 17 points.

There were other positive signs, such as D'Angelo Russell finally starting to look comfortable in the offense, Steph Curry finding his stroke, and the Warriors making hay in transition. But make no mistake: They're a long way from figuring this thing out.

Defensively, they're overmatched at virtually every position. Their replacement-level wings have no hope of slowing down the league's top perimeter threats, their backcourt is liable to get physically overwhelmed, and their bigs have been getting shredded in the pick-and-roll, with opponents shooting an ungodly 78.6% in the restricted area. Even in their win over the Pelicans - with Green anchoring the back line of defense - they surrendered 56 points on 71.8% shooting inside the circle.

To that end, the Chriss experiment has to be pretty close to done at this point. He really seems to be trying, but he just doesn't have a feel for the timing of pick-and-roll defense. He also repeatedly gets caught flat-footed, jumping too early or too late.

The Warriors have surrendered almost 24 more points per 100 possessions when Chriss is on the floor. Once either Looney or Cauley-Stein returns, there's no reason for him to continue being part of the rotation.

Replacing Chriss with a semi-competent big should make a positive difference, but it certainly won't cure all the symptoms ailing Golden State's defense. The Thompson injury and the Russell trade have left the roster with a damning lack of size and physicality in the backcourt. Thompson wasn't just a terrific individual defender; he could switch onto just about anyone and provide real deterrence as a back-end helper whenever Green was pulled out to the perimeter. On top of providing minimal resistance at the point of attack, Russell is one of the most ineffectual help defenders in the league. And the Warriors have largely been forced to abandon their switching scheme because they don't have enough good (or even passable) defenders to make it work.

They're also being beset by miscommunication and chaos. When the Warriors bring two defenders to the ball, their help rotations are often slow in coming, if they come at all. There's frequent confusion over what the coverage even is - who's guarding who, a switch or a hedge, man-to-man or zone. These are issues the Warriors should tidy up as their newcomers get more familiar and develop some synergy, but the collective lack of defensive IQ will continue to plague them.

Even Green has made his share of defensive mistakes - gambling for steals, overhelping off the strong-side corner, and surrendering open threes - many of which have been the result of not trusting his teammates (often correctly). At least the Warriors have been forcing heaps of turnovers, which is the defense's lone saving grace thus far.

Meanwhile, the offense, which is supposed to keep this team in the playoff mix, has endured its own share of difficulties.

The lack of secondary scoring and playmaking means opposing defenses can just blitz the bejeezus out of Curry with minimal consequences. He gets taken out of the play, and the ball gets stuck in the middle of the floor, where dithering bigs try to make reads on the roll. Chriss has been a particularly bad offender, either taking too long to decide what to do or decisively passing up open dunks to fling the ball to Glen Robinson III in the corner. Omari Spellman has struggled to time his rolls properly and to finish at the rim. Rookie Eric Paschall has shown some creativity, but his decision-making is still inconsistent.

Green has been the best of the roll men, but he hasn't been barreling down the lane with his typical ferocity in four-on-three situations.

One solution might be to use more Curry-Russell pick-and-pops, though Russell isn't much of a screener and Kerr would probably chafe at the suggestion. Still, Kerr might eventually need to relent and put the ball in Curry's hands more often. The coach is trying to run the same whirring motion offense he's always run, but his team no longer has the talent to effectively execute it. There is close to zero passing skill outside of the Warriors' top three. Green wound up shooting four pull-up jumpers against the Clippers because Curry was being face-guarded away from the ball and nobody else could make a move or create separation.

Green should not be shooting off the dribble (he did so just 29 times last season) but that's what happens when multiple non-scorers are on the floor at the same time, allowing the defense to load up against the real threats. Inevitably, the ball will find its way to a non-shooter or a non-playmaker, which can torpedo a whole possession.

The Warriors are still creating open threes by swinging the ball around or kicking it out of the short roll to beat traps, but the guys who are now shooting those open threes aren't scary enough to deter a defense from sending multiple bodies at Curry. Even after Poole and Damion Lee combined to go 7-of-11 from deep on Monday, Golden State ranks just 23rd in 3-point percentage (30.9%).

Russell is a decent release valve who can create his own shot, wriggle into the lane for floaters, and generally stack up some impressive counting stats, but he still isn't an efficient scorer. Through four games, he's at 48.6% true shooting after registering a career-best 53.3% mark last season.

There was a lot of buzz (including from yours truly) about the individual numbers Curry might put up this season, but given the relentless defensive pressure he's receiving, it appears that's going to be more difficult than anticipated. It's insane how hard he must work just to find a sliver of daylight. Of Curry's 10 3-point attempts per game so far, only 1.7 have come with at least 6 feet of space. He attempted four such looks per contest in 2018-19.

It stands to reason that Curry will need to expend more energy at the defensive end, too. All the pre-switching and scram-switching the Warriors employed to prevent him from getting dragged into a screening action or to pull him out of an unfavorable matchup is no longer viable. Where can Curry hide now that he's playing alongside several other defenders who need to be hidden? Who can bail him out?

The Warriors will be better when they get Looney, Cauley-Stein, and Alec Burks back, but they'll have no way around playing bad players. Their bench will remain a mess. They're still going to be awful when Curry or Green leaves the floor. And the hard cap they triggered with the Russell sign-and-trade gives them limited maneuverability to upgrade the roster. A lot of these issues are here to stay, at least until Thompson returns, which at this rate could prove to be a pointless exercise in 2019-20.

It's too early to bury this team, of course, and you can never count out Curry and Green. But in order to remain even remotely relevant in the Western Conference, the Warriors face a steep uphill climb with a nonexistent margin for error.

Joe Wolfond writes about basketball and tennis for theScore