The Warriors have been casual all season. Is that catching up?

The Houston Rockets deserve loads of credit for putting the Golden State Warriors on the edge of the cliff of failure. James Harden has gone cold from long-range, but found his shooters in the critical moments of Game 5. Chris Paul protected the ball and fought through tight defense. Clint Capela slid into the Warriors’ nightmares. Other rotation players fought hard, particularly on defense. Mike D’Antoni and Jeff Bzdelik put together a smart, effective gameplan, and made all the right tweaks along the way.

But the Warriors have been casual all season long, as if they were too good to deign try hard with consistency. One wonders if that’s caught up with Golden State just enough to shift the calculus in Houston’s favor.

The most potent indicators of the Warriors’ carefree attitude during the regular season were turnovers. Steve Kerr called out Golden State’s carelessness with the ball regularly, but it never really changed. Despite putting up the league’s best overall offensive rating, the Warriors were No. 27 in turnover rate this season, ahead of only the Grizzlies, Hawks, and Sixers. Golden State shot so incredibly well that the turnover problem didn’t matter in the grand scheme. It matters now.

The Warriors had 16 turnovers in Game 5 on Thursday after 16 in the Game 4 loss. Strikingly on Thursday, three of Golden State’s four major offensive weapons had more turnovers than assists. Draymond Green had a second straight high-turnover game with six (including the game-clincher) to just four assists. Kevin Durant didn’t have a single assist with two turnovers. Klay Thompson turned the ball over four times with one assist as Houston ran him off the three-point line.

The attention to detail on offense hasn’t been there. Houston has been making things uncomfortable with switches, pressure, occasional show hedges, really good rotations (most of the time), and Capela’s rim protection. Golden State hasn’t been able to reliably get out in transition, as the Rockets have made a point of getting back. Houston has been caught in cross-matches in the scramble with some frequency, but the Warriors too rarely attack those mismatches quickly.

Golden State just doesn’t appear to be locked in on how to attack Houston’s resistance.

How much this is bound to the Warriors’ sudden infatuation with isolation ball is a good question for Golden State to ask itself. Kerr seemed unconcerned with the stylistic shift after the game, though during the game he was shown screaming at his team to run the offense. Tom Haberstroh pointed out following Game 4 that the Warriors are running isolation about three times more frequently than they did all season. One wonders whether, had Golden State been locked in on punking all comers all season long, they’d have stuck to their gameplan and punked Houston, too.

(Of course, Golden State was locked in all of 2015-16 ... and lost in the NBA Finals. Basketball is wild.)

The other aspect of this question is all about home-court advantage. Both teams have won a road game in the series, but the Rockets will have Game 7, if necessarily, back at home. The Houston crowd was electric on Thursday, and data indicates that role players see the biggest advantage from home court. That’s huge for P.J. Tucker, Trevor Ariza, and Eric Gordon, who will be asked to take and make big shots, just as they have been throughout the series.

In March, Golden State essentially gave up on the chase for the No. 1 seed despite being made well aware that the Rockets were no jokes. Injuries to Curry and Durant dictated this somewhat, but a team as talented as Golden State shouldn’t ever really be out of the race. The Warriors made a decision to reserve their focus and energy for the playoffs. They didn’t chase after Houston.

The benefit was some rest down the stretch. We’ll see the cost of that decision on Monday for Game 7 back in Houston, assuming the Rockets don’t just end the series on the road Saturday.

A million what-ifs will sprout from a Warriors’ defeat. Kerr in particular will find himself under the microscope because the team’s talent is so undeniable and coaches always get obscene shares of scrutiny. But it’s a real question he’ll have to answer: knowing his Warriors lacked focus all season, should he have pushed them to finish strong and challenge for the No. 1 seed?

Falling short in 2016 after going after the wins record likely colored his view here, and that’s completely reasonable. But there are trade-offs for everything. In 2016, the Warriors chose history and momentum at the expense of rest. It didn’t work out. In 2018, the Warriors chose rest and ease at the expense of focus and home court. That’s 48 minutes from not working out, either.

As the Warriors are quickly learning, you can’t win them all.