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INDIANAPOLIS — Steve Kerr didn’t have a message for his team after its most disappointing dud of this season’s infancy. Fresh off a defeat to the injury-riddled, previously winless Pacers isn’t the time for a speech. 

Especially when the unsaid is so obvious. 

“We know the West is loaded. It feels like we just gave away two games that if we are locked in and focused and playing the way we know we can play, we should have won them,” Kerr said at the postgame podium.” 

Golden State’s 114-109 defeat to the Pacers came two days after a loss in Milwaukee to the Bucks, who played without Giannis Antetokounmpo. It dropped the Warriors to 4-3, slowing the momentum from the opening two weeks. And it was the result of a fourth-quarter collapse, taking place after Steph Curry checked back into the game for the final six minutes with a nine-point lead.

Curry finished with 24 points, but the Warriors were outscored by 21 in his minutes on Saturday as he shot 8-for-23 and committed five turnovers. 

The Midwest wasn’t kind to Curry and the Warriors, whose schedule doesn’t lighten up in the immediate future. Upcoming patches include a midweek back-to-back — at home against Phoenix then at Sacramento — the Nuggets in Denver, and a back-to-back with West powers, the Thunder and the Spurs. The Warriors play five of their 15 back-to-backs in the first five weeks of the season and are in the middle of stretch that requires them to play 10 of 12 games on the road.

Taking care of business against shorthanded teams such as Milwaukee and Indiana is a key to the strong start the Warriors envisioned, but they’re returning home with a pair of losses. 

“We’ve got to pick up (these) games somewhere along the way,” Kerr said. “But at the end of the season, the last three years it’s the same thing — one or two games. So we have to find a way to be sharper, be better. There’s going to be some tough nights. There are always tough nights during the season. This should not have been one of them.

“We had the day off yesterday. We didn’t shoot around this morning. We had plenty of rest, but the execution down the stretch was awful and it’s a shame, because our young guys played their ass off.”

It’s somewhat fitting that Game 7 of the World Series happened as the Warriors finished up their two-game trip to the Midwest with a game against the Pacers, because Golden State has adopted a baseball-like mindset.

Ball clubs value winning a series, and the Warriors have made winning the week an early-season calling card. 

For the first time this season, they lost the week. 

In Milwaukee, the team learned that the superstar Antetokounmpo, who was listed as probable, was scratched from the game 30 minutes before tipoff. It instantly became a trap game. As Kerr exaggerated postgame, it feels like the Warriors are 0-12 in games against teams without their star player in recent years. 

“I told our coaches, if I was an opposing coach, I would just sit the star every time,” Kerr said after that defeat.

Without Antetokounmpo, the Bucks spaced the floor with shooters all over, confusing the Warriors’ switching defense with constant drive-and-kicks punctuated with extra passes. Former Warrior Ryan Rollins lit Golden State up with a career-high 32 points. 

Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green dismissed Kerr’s theory that mental and physical fatigue played a role in the 120-110 defeat. 

“If we bounce back like we should on Saturday, you still win the week, as we call it, which is a big deal for us,” Curry said after the Bucks loss. 

The Pacers denied them the week. Unlike the Bucks, the Warriors knew how short-staffed Indiana was ahead of time. Tyrese Haliburton is out for the year. Bennedict Mathurin, TJ McConnell, Obi Toppin, and Andrew Nembhard are nursing serious injuries. 

Indiana was also on the second night of a back-to-back. Yet the Pacers looked faster for most of the night. 

Pascal Siakam (27 points) took control early, shredding the Warriors’ zone and punishing mismatches. Then Aaron Nesmith (31 points) got hot from deep. And in the second half, two-way guard Quenton Jackson (25 points) lived in the lane.

Despite those individual Indiana efforts and despite Curry coughing up five turnovers, the Warriors built a double-digit lead. Lineups led by Jimmy Butler (20 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds), supplemented by energy from Gui Santos, Moses Moody, and Brandin Podziemski enabled the Warriors to take a 104-93 lead with 5:45 left. 

Then Draymond Green committed a turnover. Curry clanked a pair of 3s he normally makes with his eyes closed before giving up another turnover. 

Curry and Jonathan Kuminga miscommunicated on a scram switch to leave Siakam open for a go-ahead, straightaway 3-pointer with 37 seconds left. Poor execution cost the Warriors another empty trip, and Jackson iced the game with a runner off the glass. 

The mood postgame was expectedly sour. 

“Right now is a moment that everybody’s pissed off,” Santos said. “We’d just lost a game. Nobody was saying too much.”

When the locker room opened to the media, players yet to shower scrolled on their phones, some with headphones in. Needing time to cool off after a loss is normal, it just hadn’t been common yet for this Warriors team that started 4-1. 

Things returned to normal once somebody turned on the television to Game 7 of the World Series. Parallel play was off. Nicknames for Freddie Freeman and chatter about baseball strategy were on. 

The Warriors will need to be able to flip a switch on their focus like that on the court, too. 

“It’s the frustration of not being able to capture that momentum that we had,” Curry said. “The start that we had. I know we can get it back. A long way to go. We started (4-1), everybody’s talking about how tough the schedule is, this and that. But these were two games we really should have had and wanted to have. Hopefully it lights a fire in all of us to get back on the horse and figure out how we can win a very difficult stretch coming out.”