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Draymond Green on Warriors’ steep and sudden decline: ‘Right now it’s our turn to get beat up on’

SAN FRANCISCO — When Draymond Green came out to address the media following the Golden State Warriors‘ 127-110 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Friday, he had black tape wrapped around his left wrist and finger. He couldn’t help but almost laugh as he described the injury, saying he couldn’t grip the ball with his injured hand for the entire second half as the once-mighty Warriors fell to 1-4 to start the season.

The severity of Green’s injury is not yet known, but the Warriors’ plight is obvious. With Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson both sidelined until at least February, Golden State has no illusions of making an unprecedented run to the playoffs. Green put things in perspective, saying that this streak of bad injury luck and poor performance is just part of the cycle of basketball.

“I’ve won my entire life, so it’s definitely different. But at the same time, you’ve just got to have a perspective,” Green said. “We’ve went the bulk of five years pretty healthy. We’ve went the bulk of five years beating up on pretty much everyone. Right now it’s our turn to get beat up on. That’s kind of what’s been going on.”

Warriors coach Steve Kerr is preaching the same sense of perspective, which he says he picked up from legendary Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. 

“The objective is still to win. It’s still to prepare. It’s still to compete. The expectations change,” Kerr said after the loss to San Antonio. “I think there’s an awareness of where we are. What we have to do is go compete, go play, and we’ve got a bunch of hungry young guys who are ready to play. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be the team on the floor — the first team there for the loose ball. There’s no reason why we can’t be the team that plays hardest every night. We may not have enough talent, but we should be competitive as hell. That’s what we’re gonna preach and that’s how we’re gonna prepare the guys.”

As many have pointed out, including our own Brad Botkin, Curry’s injury might end up being a positive for the Warriors in the long run. It was pretty clear over the first few games that, even with Curry, they had a difficult, if not impossible, road to making the Western Conference playoffs. Now that he’s out, Golden State will almost assuredly get a lottery pick, and likely a good one.

That opens up all sorts of possibilities for either selecting a talented young player themselves, or trading the pick to get a player to help them in the more immediate future. With Curry, Thompson and Green hopefully returning at full strength to start next season along with another asset or two, the Warriors could be right in the mix for a title again next season.

But for now, as Green said, they’re going to take their lumps as one of the worst teams in the NBA.

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