The Golden State Warriors were trying to find an identity without Steph Curry, and they just couldn’t figure it out.

Following Wednesday’s loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, head coach Steve Kerr talked with ESPN about what his opponents did right.

“[The Timberwolves] guarded us on the perimeter. They were trying to take away our 3s. And that forced Jimmy [Butler] to play a lot of one-on-one against a long, athletic team. They just made the decision not to leave our perimeter guys, even our non-shooters on the perimeter,” Kerr said. “Once Steph went out, it changed everything for our whole team, but especially for Jimmy.”

The Timberwolves took advantage of Curry’s absence, and things were never the same for the Warriors.

They hounded nearly every player for Golden State, no matter where they were shooting from.

But their dogged approach to guarding on the perimeter really hurt the Warriors, who were playing terrific basketball prior to Curry’s injury.

Without him, the team looked and felt completely different.

The Timberwolves were bigger, stronger, and more aggressive on defense.

All of that added up to the Warriors being limited from the perimeter and beyond the three-point arc.

Kerr believes his team would have had a chance to win it all if Curry were healthy.

Instead, this playoff run will always be a big “what if” for Warriors fans, who will forever wonder how things could have played out differently if they had this biggest and most impactful star.

The Warriors are so reliant on Curry that the Timberwolves were able to easily manipulate and limit them while he was gone.

In the end, that made all the difference and ended the season for Golden State.

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