The Golden State Warriors have been the NBA’s best team of the past decade, but this season, they’re only hovering around league average. The Dubs are 11-10 and in eighth place in the Western Conference, and haven’t won or lost more than three games in a row all year.
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Draymond Green is known for his brutal honesty, and on the most recent episode of The Draymond Green Show, he took a good, hard look at his team in the mirror.
Green said that there are many reasons the Warriors haven’t gotten off to a great start, but unsurprisingly for someone who won the 2016-17 Defensive Player of the Year award and has been named to nine All-Defensive teams, he said that it all starts on the defensive end.
“Jimmy [Butler] and I have been very vocal about our defense, how we need to be better defensively,” he said. “The offensive numbers aren’t great, so we definitely have to be better offensively, also, but I just think the defense is about a presence. In order to be a great team, you have to have a presence, and that presence is usually built on the defensive end.”
“A team that just scores the basketball is not necessarily a team that you really worry about because they don’t have that physical presence,” he continued.
Statistically, the offense deserves more of the blame for this slow start, as Golden State is currently ranked 8th in defensive rating but just 23rd offensively. Still, Green is tired of having guys who aren’t even stars go off against his team.
“We’ve given up career highs to maybe six guys this year,” he said before bringing up second-year Rockets guard Reed Sheppard dropping 31 points in the absence of Kevin Durant and a number of other impact players in Wednesday’s 104-100 Houston win.
Green wasn’t trying to knock Sheppard, but he said the Warriors have lacked the defensive presence needed to take care of their own business. “Everybody’s getting double their average [against us],” he said. “You can’t win at the NBA level when you’re doing that.”
Green will get to see a team with defensive presence tonight when the 20-1 Oklahoma City Thunder visit the Chase Center. OKC won the title last year and has only gotten better, and defensively, they’ve been historically great.
Being that the Warriors have the worst offense in the league without Steph Curry and will again be without him as he recovers from his quad contusion, it’s going to be a tall order to avoid falling back to .500.
Curry’s injury isn’t serious, and he is expected back soon, but even with him, the Warriors are going to need to be better on both ends of the floor to remain relevant in the West.
The team took off after acquiring Butler at least year’s trade deadline, and many assumed that this season would be a continuation of that, but that hasn’t really happened.
Green is used to winning, and he’s understandably frustrated with a mediocre first quarter of the season. The schedule is tough in the next two weeks, so we’ll see if he’s able to rally the troops and get things turned around.
