The Golden State Warriors are facing criticism for their recent defensive shortcomings. Coming off their crushing 104-100 loss to the Houston Rockets on Wednesday night, Draymond Green didn’t mince his words while critiquing his team’s lapses on the defensive end.
While speaking with the media after the game, Draymond Green showed no hesitation while calling out the Warriors’ poor performance. Although a reporter referred to the Warriors as a “solid defensive team”, Green quickly responded, “Our defense is s**t.”
“It’s not necessarily the numbers,” Green said. “How do you feel when you’re out there? … It’s bigger than numbers… The defense is about demeanor. So if it’s letdown after letdown and it kills your demeanor, it kills your bravado, then you’re just a soft team.”
Draymond Green acknowledged that even if the team was getting good stops, it didn’t mean anything if the opposition didn’t feel threatened.
When asked how the team could find this “force”, Green said, “It requires individuals, all of us as individuals, to take on the challenge. If you can take on your challenge, then you can make your team damn work. The only way the team’s going to work is if we take on our individual challenges.”
“Right now,” he continued. “We are individually – I know everybody likes to twist words – I said, WE are individually f***ing awful.”
Amid all this pressure, a reporter asked Draymond Green how the team was maintaining its spirit. Green said, “I’m not a big ‘keep the spirit up’ guy, that ain’t really the department I’m selling. I’ll motherf*** you. So that’s somebody else’s area to keep the spirit up, I do mine the opposite way.”
Draymond Green’s response captures the growing frustrations within the Warriors’ unit. Considering that Jimmy Butler also sounded off on their overall shortcomings, it is evident that the veteran core is unhappy with the output.
Nevertheless, Warriors’ guard Brandin Podziemski remained optimistic while responding to Butler’s statement during his post-game media availability.
“I think we all care,” Podziemski said. “Obviously, it looks a little bit worse because we lost and we’ve been losing. But I mean, no one’s going to bail us out of this kind of losing funk we’re in. So we’ve just got to dig deep, and it may not look pretty, but this is how you win.”
With another loss in the books, the Warriors have fallen to 10-10 on the season, placing eighth in the Western Conference standings.
Along with the players, Steve Kerr also addressed the grim reality of the Warriors’ current status as a mediocre team. While there is still hope for them to turn things around, a recent string of injuries to key players, including Stephen Curry, may impede their efforts.
