SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Kerr kept warning us about the long road his Golden State Warriors face this season. We just didn’t realize it would be this long, and that it would start in the depths of a dark and cavernous chasm.

It took the Warriors nearly four minutes to score their first basket on opening night, a D’Angelo Russell jumper, as they fell behind 14-0 to a vastly superior Los Angeles Clippers team. It was only fitting that the same unstoppable superhuman who ended their Oracle Arena run in disappointment, Kawhi Leonard, opened the Chase Center in the exact same fashion. New city, but the same story — a cruel joke by the league’s scheduling committee.

Just like Stephen Curry heaving up an airball as the first-ever shot at Chase Center a couple of weeks ago, Golden State’s depressing scoring drought silenced the crowd of fans most worried would fail to bring the enthusiasm of their Oakland counterparts. Only a personal 10-0 run by Russell brought the team and the fans back to life, but it was short-lived as the Clippers dominated the rest of the game to earn the 141-122 win while shooting a robust 62.5 percent from the field.

“Our defense was atrocious,” Draymond Green said after the game. ” … Give them some credit. They’re a damn good team, but our defense was pathetic.”

It was a stark contrast to the Warriors crowd we saw last June, even as their team hobbled to the finish line after major injuries to Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson. Up until the last ever referee’s whistle at Oracle, the crowd believed their team had a chance to win. On Thursday at Chase Center, it was the exact opposite — even when the score was close, they never dared to express a glimmer of hope.

Instead, they groaned. They whispered. They laughed. Anything to distract themselves from what was happening on the court, particularly during a third quarter in which the Clippers outscored the Warriors 46-33 to officially put the game out of reach. It’s not every day you see a 46-point quarter in the NBA, but it could become a regularity for this Warriors defense — at least in the short-term.

“They hit us with our typical third quarter type of vibe,” Curry said with a smile after the game. ” … Our margin for error is really slim. Those things we’ve got to correct if we’re going to compete.”  

The whole night was weird, especially for those of us in the building who are used to seeing the version of the Warriors that dominated the NBA for the past five seasons. It’s been strange since the team moved to San Francisco. Kerr, not used to the rules around his new residence in the city, got a parking ticket for failing to move his car for scheduled street cleaning. Curry said he was late to the arena before a preseason game because of unforeseen traffic. Kerr continually got locked out of his office in the arena mid-game, a problem he’s hoping gets remedied swiftly.

And that’s really the lesson from opening night. Yes, the Warriors are bad. But there are so many kinks to work out, so much to get used to that it’s hard to imagine where they’ll end up come April. It didn’t help that they faced a veteran team that’s favored to win this year’s title. Kerr and his players have continued to preach patience throughout the preseason, and Thursday was a glaring example of why.

“You’ve got no choice but to be patient,” Green said after the loss. “You can’t really speed the process up. The only thing that really helps with that is experience. You have to be patient.”

It’s hard to talk about the team and specific things they can do better because it’s so clear that they are still getting to know each other. Kerr said last week that he doesn’t know what this team’s identity is, and that was evident in the opener. Pet plays that Curry and Green are used to executing without thought are now being encumbered by doe-eyed newbies unintentionally standing in the wrong place. During this play where Curry makes a patented relocation to get open, Green literally has to yell at Glenn Robinson III in the middle of the play to set a screen for Curry.

The play was a microcosm of the game as a whole, and perhaps the entire early season — even when something goes right for the Warriors, there’s a lesson about what went wrong.

Unfortunately for Warriors fans, and those of us who hate seeing teams devastated by injury (let’s face it, if Thompson is on the court it’s a much different team), this could get worse before it gets better. Kerr will continue to tinker with rotations until he finds some semblance of reliability. Curry will continue to see double and triple-teams while forcing passes to players who aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Kevon Looney, one of the team’s few holdovers from last season, aggravated the hamstring injury that kept him out of the entire preseason.

It’s easy to preach patience, but in a Western Conference that is as loaded as it has perhaps ever been, the Warriors might already be running out of time.

“This is not a one-off. This is the reality,” Kerr said after the game. “There are going to be nights like this during the year. You have to play through it and you have to keep fighting and keep getting better. That’s the plan.”