The Warriors had the game where they wanted it: at home, in control, and up 12 points with 3:47 left. Then the Grizzlies ripped off a 17-0 run and turned Golden State’s first game inside Chase Center this season into a 111-108 loss.
That kind of finish is hard enough to absorb on its own. It looks sharper when set beside the broader home-opening record around Steph Curry’s tenure: the Warriors are 8-9 in their first home game of the year over his 17 seasons with the team, and since Chase Center opened they are 3-4 in home openers.
The latest loss also had the kind of sequence that lingers. Stephen Curry fouled Memphis guard Jaylen Wells, and the Grizzlies cashed in for four quick points. Three minutes earlier, Golden State was still in control. By the end, the Warriors had been outscored in a burst that flipped the game and left them staring at another late-game collapse.
Curry scored 24 points, but the individual production did not change the result. Afterward, he said the team will “lose sleep” over the late collapse, and added that losses like this one “sting a little bit more.”
Steve Kerr’s postgame framing was just as blunt. He said, “Eight different things had to happen” for the defeat to unfold, a line that captured how quickly the game unraveled once Memphis seized the final minutes.
The context around the roster made the finish harder to dismiss. The Warriors are trying to manage injuries to Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody, and Friday’s loss came with the team already trying to tread water until those injured starting wings can return. Brandin Podziemski had been upgraded to probable for the game against Memphis, but Golden State still could not protect a lead it had built late.
There is also the building itself, which has not exactly behaved like a fortress in these openers. The Warriors are 3-4 in home openers since Chase Center opened, and the Kerr-era Warriors are 6-6 in those games. Memphis has already been part of that story once before, with the Grizzlies also winning Golden State’s only previous home-opener matchup.
So the question after this one is not just how the Warriors lost, but how familiar the script felt. A lead. A late stretch. A home crowd waiting for a finish that never came.
The Grizzlies will be back at Chase Center on October 23, 2026, at 7:00 PM PT, and the Warriors will have another chance to show that this building can be more than a place where opponents walk in and leave with the better ending.