{"id":282927,"date":"2025-11-10T09:09:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T09:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/282927\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T09:09:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T09:09:11","slug":"warriors-sparked-by-draymond-greens-challenge-in-runaway-win-over-pacers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/282927\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors sparked by Draymond Green\u2019s challenge in runaway win over Pacers"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Draymond Green wasn\u2019t just airing out some frustration with his team\u2019s recent lackadaisical play<\/a> after Friday\u2019s blowout loss to Nikola Joki\u0107 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like after last game Draymond challenged us to be better,\u201d veteran big man Al Horford said on Sunday after the Warriors ran away from the Pacers for a 114-83 win. \u201cAnd come out with more intensity, better energy, and I felt like we did that today and it\u2019s something that we have to continue to do every day, every game, because if we do that we\u2019re gonna be in a really good position as a group. But it\u2019s something that has to be constant and it\u2019s a good start and now we hit the road and we\u2019ll see where we\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Warriors\u2019 upcoming six-game road trip is going to provide a litmus test for where they stack up \u2014 especially Tuesday night against the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder \u2014 but what they\u2019re shown heading into that game is inconsistency. It\u2019s a trait that Green and the veteran leaders of the group know has been a problem throughout the early part of the season.<\/p>\n

In the midst of saying that \u201cour defense sucks,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

For his part, Butler thought the entire group responded \u201cincredibly well\u201d to the messaging from Friday, even if it appeared throughout much of Sunday\u2019s game that the Warriors were having a lot of the same issues against a severely undermanned Pacers group.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always said we\u2019re gonna win together and we\u2019re gonna lose together,\u201d Butler said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ll come together and understand that whenever somebody\u2019s speaking, it\u2019s not at one somebody, even though somebody\u2019s name might be in it, it\u2019s as a whole, as a group. And you just got to get back to winning, doing winning plays on both sides of the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019s performance as just a bad night, but it will be interesting to see how the 23-year-old responds on the upcoming trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a make or miss league,\u201d Butler said. \u201cIf he\u2019s making\u00a0\u2019em, we don\u2019t have this conversation. If he drives and he misses, y\u2019all are still gonna say something, not y\u2019all (specifically), but people miss shots \u2026 it will never be won or lost if JK misses two shots or if he turned the ball over once, it\u2019s 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\u2019s a starter on this team.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s spirits up after a rough stretch in which Kuminga has gone 12-for-38 over his last three games. Butler doesn\u2019t want Kuminga to get too high or too low and he doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that he\u2019s played bad,\u201d Butler said. \u201cThe stat sheet (says) he had five points tonight. Whoop-dee-doo, who cares? Because there\u2019s gonna be nights when he has 45 points and it\u2019s gonna look like \u2018Look at this.\u2019 But he\u2019s playing well enough \u2014 on the defensive side, he\u2019s rebounding the basketball, it\u2019s more than just scoring which is what I try to tell him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Jonathan Kuminga has struggled of late after a strong start to the season. (D. Ross Cameron \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n

In the short-term, Green\u2019s 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<\/a> 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\u2019s leadership style up close.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very sharp,\u201d Horford said. \u201cHe gives great perspective. And I feel like he\u2019s reasonable with us and kind of paints the picture clear and I feel like he\u2019s teaching out there a lot when he\u2019s getting after us or saying stuff so I feel like he does a really good job with that and for me it\u2019s trying to learn, absorb from him, and seeing how he operates.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Butler\u2019s mind, the contents of Green\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaking the challenge on the defensive side of the floor and taking it personal when your man\u2019s scoring,\u201d Butler said. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s a five man game, but that\u2019s what the whole (message) was \u2018Who are we gonna be?\u2019 And I just think we got to be the most connected group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kerr knows that his team isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

More than anything, Kerr just wants to get through the rough part of this early season schedule and make it through healthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not playing very well, clearly,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cWe had a great fourth quarter \u2026 but overall we haven\u2019t played real well. But I\u2019m very confident in this team, it\u2019s gonna be a tough trip \u2026 we kind of felt like getting through this early part of the schedule in one piece, and if we\u2019re 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\u2019re pretty healthy and we\u2019re gonna get there. I can picture the team, I can see what kind of team we\u2019re gonna be, but we don\u2019t really have our identity yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Draymond Green wasn\u2019t just airing out some frustration with his team\u2019s recent lackadaisical play after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2243,355,99],"class_list":["post-282927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}