As the Golden State Warriors continue to try to find a better defensive rhythm heading into Friday’s showdown with the Denver Nuggets, Warriors forward Draymond Green wanted to make something clear on the heels of Tuesday night’s embarrassing 33-point defeat at the hands of the Boston Celtics: Don’t just blame DeMarcus Cousins for the Warriors’ woes.
“I think so many people are kind of looking at the starting lineup and saying, ‘Oh, DeMarcus is in there and the defense is worse,'” Green said after Wednesday’s practice. “But our defense has been horses— no matter who’s in there. It’s easy to look at the numbers and think the numbers tell a story, but the fact of the matter is we haven’t been competing.”nike nfl jerseys cheap paypal
Cousins, who returned to action on Jan. 18 after missing almost an entire year while rehabbing an Achilles injury, has played in just 17 games with the Warriors. He is averaging 15.5 points and 8.1 rebounds per game, but opposing teams have repeatedly attacked him on the defensive end. For his part, he is not outwardly concerned about his defensive issues, chafing when the question was posed after Tuesday’s blowout loss.
“We sucked,” Green said of the loss to the Celtics. “We got embarrassed. But it’s just about competing. I don’t think we came out with the right intensity level, playing with that competitive spirit that we needed to play with in order to win games at a high level. We just got to compete. We compete, can’t nobody beat us. And even sometimes when we don’t compete people still can’t beat us, but we need to compete.”cheap nfl jerseys china nike
Aside from defending Cousins, Green took personal responsibility for trying to get the entire team to play better defense.
“It falls on me to get guys to lock in on that side of the ball,” Green said. “I haven’t done a good job with that because we’re clearly not locked in on that side. That directly falls on me. Sometimes in life you got to make people do what they necessarily may not want to do. Defense is usually one of those things … so I have to focus on that and do a better job at that.”
Kerr admitted that after the kind of embarrassing defeat against the Celtics, both he and his players had to do a little soul searching. The Warriors come into Friday’s game having lost five of their last eight games.