Over the past week, the Warriors suffered losses to two veteran-led Western Conference foes in the Spurs and the Suns. After each of those games, I spent some time in the visiting locker rooms and gleaned insight that could help the Warriors move forward into being a playoff team like both of those squads are perennially.

The first comment that stood out was one from Tim Duncan. When asked about getting only his third regular season triple-double of his career (a stat that stunned all of us on press row), Duncan replied ?I couldn?t make a shot, so I figured I?d pass it.?

While also acting as a deflection that gave credit to his teammates, Duncan?s attitude both in the game and out of it is something Golden State can learn from. Multiple members of the Spurs and Suns mentioned that it was incredibly important to do whatever it takes to win the game whether it shows up in the box score, as it did with Duncan, or it does not.

While the Warriors have been a better rebounding team this year than last (when they were all-time bad on the boards), they are still fifth from the bottom of the league overall Rebound Rate. Some may argue that part of this is attributable to the vast array of big man injuries, yet the fact of the matter remains that a team with people who are actually properly sized for their position should be able to do better.

Furthermore, the Warriors have done well on the offensive boards (8th in the NBA as of this writing), so the personnel has not been the sole limiting factor.

One other player this particularly effects is Dorell Wright. As noted about a week ago, Wright grew into a more important offensive role while David Lee was out of action. That addition gives Golden State another dimension that was necessary from the SF slot considering the roles of Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry in the offense. However, a natural progression from this development is that now opposing scouting and coaching staffs are spending more time figuring out how to limit Wright?s impact on the game.

After Tuesday?s game, Coach Gregg Popovic talked about how it was important to keep Dorell Wright off the three point line. The Spurs executed beautifully on this point, holding Wright to 1-5 from beyond the arc and only 13 points on the night. Just two days later, the Suns did a similarly strong job and limited him to 10 points and 2-6 from three point land.

At this point in his career, the Warriors and Wright need to do one of three things: get Wright the looks he was getting before, change his offensive role somewhat, or just keep on moving through without changing a thing. One of the challenges when it comes to Wright is that he is far better in terms of scoring effectiveness on shots created by others than on ones he creates in half court sets. Should that bear out, it limits the variety of ways to tweak things while optimizing the usage and shooting looks for everyone.

On a similar note, the team seems a little too eager to get the ball to Andris Biedrins with his back to the basket, particularity against the Spurs. Unsurprisingly, this did not work out too well. One important thing good teams do and the rest do not is make sure that each player gets their touches in the best place for them. Biedrins is a guy who can do a few different things well on the court, but creating with his back to the hoop has not been one of them recently.

The second major lesson came from talking to Manu Ginobili and Jason Richardson. Both Warriors home games this week were characterized by the veteran opponents having the ability to respond to every comeback attempt the Warriors made. In the Spurs game, it was Ginobili hitting foul shots on a potentially questionable call at the end of the 1st quarter and then drilling two quick threes to start off the second quarter. When discussing that sequence after the game, Manu talked about how it ?really hard to play good zone defense? and not to panic when faced with one. By making those shots early in the quarter, Ginobili made sure that Coach Smart kept those in the back of his mind when planning defensive sets for the rest of the game.

On Thursday, the Suns accomplished similar objectives at two different junctures in the game. First, they used some nice shooting from Grant Hill and Richardson to go on a 10-0 run after trailing at the start of the game. Later on, the Warriors (particularly Ellis) pushed the Warriors back into the fold, even tying the game, but the Suns always had an answer and never trailed after the aforementioned sequence in the first quarter.

While Curry was limited by getting poked in both eyes and David Lee is still recovering from his elbow injury, there needs to be someone other than Monta Ellis that can do this for Golden State. Both Monta and Curry can take the team on their shoulders at various junctures, but the team as a whole needs to have the swagger to both sweep the leg when carrying a lead and the sense that they can get back in the game and stay in it when they start off on the wrong side of the ledger.

The interesting thing about these points is that they absolutely could come in time. Having two capable offensive machines in Ellis and Curry gives the Warriors pieces that most other squads in their tier would kill for. Combining these guys with the rebounding of Lee and Biedrins and the growing all-around game of Dorell Wright creates different ways that the team can succeed, even against high-level opponents. The only lingering concern on this point is that each of the niches (offensive, defensive, rebounding) is somewhat narrow as there are only a few guys max on roster who can handle those roles. As such, the team is perpetually vulnerable to injury or ineffectiveness of basically anyone who logs heavy minutes. Hopefully the return of Louis Amundson and Ekpe Udoh can help this, yet the lack of a back-up PG and a reliable shooter off the bench like Anthony Morrow has made life even harder than it should have been for this squad.

At this point, the most important thing is for the Warriors to make sure they are doing their best to contribute however they can every second they are on the court while the front office tries to add guys who can make this team both deeper and better in the long term. Nothing less than improvement both within the current roster and new blood will propel this team into the playoffs in a stacked Western Conference.