Getty Dillon Brooks of the Memphis Grizzlies and Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors.
The Golden State Warriors have enjoyed a decade of dominance, winning four of the last eight NBA Championships. But while their fans have loved every second of it, the Warriors’ greatness has caused them to make some enemies along the way.
In recent years, one of those on-court enemies has been the Memphis Grizzlies. And recently, Grizzlies wing Dillon Brooks made a comment about Draymond Green and the Warriors, ripping into both parties.
“I don’t like Draymond at all,” Brooks told Tim Keown of ESPN. “I just don’t like Golden State. I don’t like anything to do with them. Draymond talks a lot. Gets away with a lot, too. His game is cool — with Golden State — but if you put him anywhere else, you’re not going to know who Draymond is. He plays with heart, plays hard, knows the ins and outs of their defense. I guess that’s why they like him over there.”
Brooks’ comments immediately went viral, with Warriors fans getting angry and NBA fans soaking in the drama. As for Green? He didn’t seem to care.
According to Keown, a Warriors spokesperson asked Green about the comments, but the Warriors star “laughed and chose to pass on the opportunity to respond.”
Over the past couple of seasons, the Warriors and Grizzlies have had many battles. Two years ago, the Grizzlies knocked the Warriors out of the Play-In Tournament, then last season, Golden State eliminated Memphis in the second round of the playoffs.
The two sides even got a Christmas Day Game this year, in which the short-handed Warriors upset the Grizzlies.
Klay Thompson Confident in Warriors
Regardless of Brooks’ comments and general hatred for the Warriors, Golden State needs to keep their focus on themselves. If they want to make noise in the playoffs this year, they will need to finish strong down the stretch of the regular season. Klay Thompson is confident in his team.
“I am very confident,” Thompson said about heading out on the road, per Kendra Andrews of ESPN. “I just know we have been trusting each other more, we’ve been talking, and our communication has been great. We’ve got some great defenders. So I’m confident we’ll have the same effort on the road.”
CJ McCollum Sounds Off on Warriors
In other news, the Warriors recently took down the New Orleans Pelicans, and after the game, CJ McCollum sounded off on what went wrong for his team. He credited Golden State’s dominance in the third quarter, which has been a trend over the years.
“I mean, whenever you lose, it’s not ideal. But I mean, we competed,” McCollum said via the Pelicans’ official YouTube channel. “We gave ourselves a chance. A couple plays that didn’t go our way down the stretch, but all in all, I mean, you give up 108 points. Twenty-six in the fourth. That second quarter hurt us. [In the] third quarter, the Warriors are very good. Historically, they go on runs in the third quarter. I mean, we only give up 28 points. But I think for us, it’s just about executing, trying to get stops, and then, when you’re playing against a team like that, you can’t give them two and three opportunities to score. It’s hard enough to stop them the first time, and then when they get kick-out threes, I think that makes it difficult. But all in all, I think we gave ourselves a chance. We just gotta get more stops, we got to play with more force, and we got to execute better.”
