{"id":278019,"date":"2025-11-12T07:56:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T07:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/278019\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T07:56:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T07:56:29","slug":"draymond-green-gets-candid-after-blowout-questions-warriors-commitment-to-winning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/278019\/","title":{"rendered":"Draymond Green gets candid after blowout, questions Warriors\u2019 commitment to winning"},"content":{"rendered":"

OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 Draymond Green took the question and ran with it.<\/p>\n

The emotional leader of the Golden State Warriors had just watched and played a role in his team getting manhandled for the second time in five days, this time a 126-102 blowout at the hands of the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder. When asked what the difference was between the way the Warriors finished last regular season after Jimmy Butler was acquired (23-8) and why the group is struggling so much to start the season (6-6), Green pondered his answer, then offered an honest and frustrated assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everybody was committed to winning and doing that any way possible,\u201d Green said. \u201cAnd right now, it doesn\u2019t feel that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a point that will surely filter down through the rest of the group as the Warriors try to figure out why they have stalled after a promising opening week. Tuesday\u2019s game showed how wide the gap is between where the Warriors are and where they\u2019d like to be again at the end of the season. It was a complete demolition by the Thunder, the best team in the league, over a team still holding out hope it can win the race against time and one more title before Stephen Curry retires.<\/p>\n

When asked why he thought his team wasn\u2019t committed and whether personal agendas were getting in the way of the common goal, Green offered a glimpse into why he feels the group is struggling early.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everyone has a personal agenda in this league,\u201d Green said. \u201cBut you have to make those personal agendas work in the team confines. And if it doesn\u2019t work, then you kind of got to get rid of your agenda, or eventually the agenda is the cause of someone getting rid of you. And so I think you don\u2019t want a team with no personal agendas because a goal is an agenda. And so you got to have some type of personal agenda, but your personal agenda must fit into the confines of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the Warriors have shown less than a month into the season is that they are struggling to find the type of cohesiveness that makes any team great, no matter who is on the floor. They aren\u2019t playing well on the defensive end, they are struggling to find a rhythm offensively, and they haven\u2019t found the consistency that defined their group for so many years.<\/p>\n

Golden State coach Steve Kerr said as much again Tuesday, acknowledging what anyone who has watched the Warriors recently could see. The group hasn\u2019t been the same since losing two straight games to a Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Milwaukee Bucks team<\/a> and an injury-riddled Indiana Pacers squad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could feel we weren\u2019t in a great place coming back from Indiana and Milwaukee,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cYou could just feel that things weren\u2019t quite clicking. I thought that continued. We got a couple of wins in there, but we\u2019re not playing well, and we haven\u2019t been playing well for, really, since the second week of the season. So it doesn\u2019t feel right, what\u2019s happening right now on the floor, the way we\u2019re playing, the way we\u2019re approaching things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way the Warriors are approaching things seems to be a sticking point for Kerr and his veteran players. After Friday\u2019s blowout loss to the Denver Nuggets<\/a>, Green, Kerr and Butler all noted that the group, especially the younger players, needed to compete harder. Though the Warriors beat the depleted Pacers on Sunday night, they still went through periods of lifeless play.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s game offered even more of a wake-up call. The Thunder beat the Warriors up and down the floor, even with Curry, who was back after missing three games with a bad cold. When Butler was asked if he agreed with Green\u2019s assessment, he said he was \u201cpartially correct,\u201d then offered his own opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just got to get back to doing whatever it takes to win,\u201d Butler said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s going to have to sacrifice something. I can\u2019t tell you what that sacrifice might be for every individual. It may be different for every individual every single night. But it\u2019s got to get back to winning is the main thing and the only thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jimmy<\/p>\n

\n Jimmy Butler and the Warriors had a tough time in Tuesday night\u2019s blowout loss to the Thunder. (D. Ross Cameron \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the way, the Warriors lost sight of what that meant. They are going through the motions early in the season and piling up losses in a difficult Western Conference. Almost as damning as Green\u2019s honesty regarding his team\u2019s setup right now was Butler\u2019s answer when asked what he thought the biggest issue was at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fight, honestly,\u201d Butler said. \u201cI think that the fight\u2019s not always there. \u2026 We got to fight, no matter what. Most of that fighting I\u2019m talking about is on the defensive end. Not getting stops means you\u2019re just not playing hard, you\u2019re just not doing whatever it takes to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curry offered his own assessment. The two-time MVP still isn\u2019t feeling well, but he knows that what he\u2019s seeing at the moment isn\u2019t good enough. He wasn\u2019t as forthright in his commentary as Green was, but he knows the Warriors need to figure out their issues quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bigger issue is obviously when you lose, you start to look around to figure out what\u2019s the issue,\u201d Curry said. \u201cCommitment to winning is just running the floor, rebounding, taking care of the basketball. It\u2019s not really about shots going in and out, and we haven\u2019t done that consistently enough, and our record shows that. The good news is we can turn it around.\u201d<\/p>\n

The interesting part about Green\u2019s commentary Tuesday night isn\u2019t just that he called out the group\u2019s collective mental togetherness. When asked by an Oklahoma reporter what the key is for a young group like the Thunder to try to repeat as champions, Green praised what he has seen from the Thunder while giving a peek into how he feels about what\u2019s happening with his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to like each other, which you can tell they love each other,\u201d Green said of the Thunder. \u201cWhich leads to all the magic. And you have to understand roles, which they definitely understand their roles. They got their top dog, they got their No. 2. Everybody come in, they know their role. \u2026 They are a well-oiled machine. They kind of just plug and play, which is how we were during those times. So it was very interesting to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Green then heaped praise on reigning MVP Shai-Gilgeous Alexander. It\u2019s the same kind of praise Green and so many others in the Warriors organization give Curry. In the process, Green offered another clue as to why the Warriors\u2019 season might not be clicking the way many had hoped. They don\u2019t have the cohesion the Thunder do \u2014 nobody does \u2014 but Green knows the Warriors are a long way from where they need to be. They got another reminder of that from the best team in the league on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when you have a leader that has that commitment to excellence day in and day out that Shai does, everyone else has to fall in line,\u201d Green said. \u201cThey\u2019re doing that, and it\u2019s special to watch. They\u2019re down Lu Dort, they\u2019re down J-Dub, they were down Kenrich Williams, they were down Aaron Wiggins, who I think is their x-factor, and it didn\u2019t seem like they were down anybody. That\u2019s a level of excellence in order to reach the (championship) over and over again that you must have, and they got that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 Draymond Green took the question and ran with it. The emotional leader of the Golden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,8217,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-278019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}