SAN FRANCISCO — Draymond Green wasn’t just airing out some frustration with his team’s recent lackadaisical play after Friday’s blowout loss to Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets. He also delivered a message to his teammates following the lifeless performance, one that was revealed following another somewhat shaky win over the injury riddled Indiana Pacers.
“I feel like after last game Draymond challenged us to be better,” veteran big man Al Horford said on Sunday after the Warriors ran away from the Pacers for a 114-83 win. “And come out with more intensity, better energy, and I felt like we did that today and it’s something that we have to continue to do every day, every game, because if we do that we’re gonna be in a really good position as a group. But it’s something that has to be constant and it’s a good start and now we hit the road and we’ll see where we’re at.”
The Warriors’ upcoming six-game road trip is going to provide a litmus test for where they stack up — especially Tuesday night against the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder — but what they’re shown heading into that game is inconsistency. It’s a trait that Green and the veteran leaders of the group know has been a problem throughout the early part of the season.
In the midst of saying that “our defense sucks,” Green, the emotional leader of the Warriors, was asked about how the young trio of Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody could get on track again, after a combined 7-for-29 performance from the field against the Nuggets. His answer, along with those of head coach Steve Kerr and veteran Jimmy Butler, could all be summed up the same way: Compete harder and play with more energy.
For his part, Butler thought the entire group responded “incredibly well” to the messaging from Friday, even if it appeared throughout much of Sunday’s game that the Warriors were having a lot of the same issues against a severely undermanned Pacers group.
“I always said we’re gonna win together and we’re gonna lose together,” Butler said. “And we’ll come together and understand that whenever somebody’s speaking, it’s not at one somebody, even though somebody’s name might be in it, it’s as a whole, as a group. And you just got to get back to winning, doing winning plays on both sides of the floor.”
Moody and Podziemski seemed to respond a little better on Sunday, scoring a combined 27 points and each finishing a plus-22. Yet after a strong start to the season, Kuminga has taken a step back over the last week. He was just 1-for-9 from the field and didn’t play down the stretch, noticeably absent from the floor when Butler helped stabilize the group and finally find a rhythm later. Both Kerr and Butler tried to brush off Kuminga’s performance as just a bad night, but it will be interesting to see how the 23-year-old responds on the upcoming trip.
“It’s a make or miss league,” Butler said. “If he’s making ’em, we don’t have this conversation. If he drives and he misses, y’all are still gonna say something, not y’all (specifically), but people miss shots … it will never be won or lost if JK misses two shots or if he turned the ball over once, it’s never gonna come down to one person. I just want him to keep that confidence high knowing that he belongs in this league, knowing that he’s a starter on this team.”
Butler said he was having Kuminga over to his house for a postgame dinner Sunday night. He has grown close to the fifth-year pro since arriving last season and wants to do what he can to keep the young player’s spirits up after a rough stretch in which Kuminga has gone 12-for-38 over his last three games. Butler doesn’t want Kuminga to get too high or too low and he doesn’t want the young forward to worry about the conversation that has hovered around Kuminga since his summer contract dispute. Butler is confident that things will turn back around for his teammate soon.
“I wouldn’t say that he’s played bad,” Butler said. “The stat sheet (says) he had five points tonight. Whoop-dee-doo, who cares? Because there’s gonna be nights when he has 45 points and it’s gonna look like ‘Look at this.’ But he’s playing well enough — on the defensive side, he’s rebounding the basketball, it’s more than just scoring which is what I try to tell him.”
Jonathan Kuminga has struggled of late after a strong start to the season. (D. Ross Cameron / Imagn Images)
In the short-term, Green’s words to the group at least helped them refocus enough to get a win they badly needed in advance of their trip. If the Warriors can get star guard Stephen Curry back on Tuesday as they expect after he missed three games because of a cold, it will help the group find its way. After watching Green and Curry from a distance for so many years, Horford has enjoyed getting to see Green’s leadership style up close.
“He’s very sharp,” Horford said. “He gives great perspective. And I feel like he’s reasonable with us and kind of paints the picture clear and I feel like he’s teaching out there a lot when he’s getting after us or saying stuff so I feel like he does a really good job with that and for me it’s trying to learn, absorb from him, and seeing how he operates.”
In Butler’s mind, the contents of Green’s message were simple. It was the same type of message Green used with the media in Denver: He wants the team, especially the younger players in the group, to play harder more consistently.
“Taking the challenge on the defensive side of the floor and taking it personal when your man’s scoring,” Butler said. “Yeah, it’s a five man game, but that’s what the whole (message) was ‘Who are we gonna be?’ And I just think we got to be the most connected group.”
Kerr knows that his team isn’t playing its best early this season. At 6-5, the Warriors have played up and down to their competition too many times over the first stretch of the year, but Kerr also remains outwardly confident that the Warriors will get things turned around soon. Curry is on the way back and Horford hit four threes Sunday after struggling for the last couple weeks. If the Warriors can get Kuminga going again it will go a long way towards their success over the 10-day trip on the horizon.
More than anything, Kerr just wants to get through the rough part of this early season schedule and make it through healthy.
“We’re not playing very well, clearly,” Kerr said. “We had a great fourth quarter … but overall we haven’t played real well. But I’m very confident in this team, it’s gonna be a tough trip … we kind of felt like getting through this early part of the schedule in one piece, and if we’re healthy, win our share of games, it sets up the rest of the season well for us. Obviously, we gave a couple games away but all in all we’re pretty healthy and we’re gonna get there. I can picture the team, I can see what kind of team we’re gonna be, but we don’t really have our identity yet.”