Getty Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors.
To say it’s been an up-and-down season for the Golden State Warriors this year would be an understatement. Every time they’ve started to break away from the .500 record they’ve hovered around, they slip right back into mediocrity with a brutal loss.
That’s exactly what happened on Sunday night. In Stephen Curry’s return to action, they lost to the LeBron James-less, D’Angelo Russell-less Los Angeles Lakers on the road – an area where they’ve struggled all season. After the game, Curry explained what went wrong for them in that Lakers game and also called out the Warriors’ “trash” play on the road this year.
“Just our overall defensive intensity, and then our mindfulness on the offensive end of how we’re trying to get shots,” Curry said via the NBA Interviews YouTube channel. “I know we shoot a lot of threes, but I think tonight we, for the most part, we had really, really good ones. Even when it gets down to the last six minutes of the game, I don’t mind any of those shots. I think sometimes we talk about like hero ball or, you know, unnecessary threes, but all of them were really good looks. [We] didn’t make them and then, or, made some, didn’t make the last two. And then AD [Anthony Davis] played amazing tonight, which was tough to keep going back and forth. But defensively, our road splits have been trash all year in all categories. So, just trying to correct that as much as possible is our challenge. First quarter, we were down 20, and to fight our way back shows you how much it matters to us to try to get over the hump on the road. We just got to have a better start.”
Curry put up some decent stats in his return to action, but it just wasn’t enough. He dropped 27 points, two rebounds, and six assists on 8-of-20 shooting from the floor and 5-of-13 shooting from behind the three-point line.
Anthony Davis Name-Drops Steph Curry & Klay Thompson
After the game, Davis also had some words, praising the Warriors in the process. He said that the Lakers had to lock in defensively in order to take down, Curry, Klay Thompson, Jordan Poole, and the defending champs.
“We know this is an elite third-quarter-team, defending champions,” Davis said via the NBA Interviews YouTube channel. “They’re going to make a run, they’re going to make plays, make shots. Between Steph, Klay, and Jordan Poole they’re elite shooters. I think we locked in defensively, they got away a couple times, but we continued to compete, even when they made their runs. We made a run of our own and closed the game out.”
Draymond Green Provides Injury Update
In other news, Draymond Green is still dealing with a hand injury, and according to an update he gave to Lisa Salters of ESPN, he reaggravated the issue during a recent game.
“I messed it up against Portland earlier in the week, so it’s just one of those things where every time it gets caught, it hurts pretty bad,” Green told Salters. “But X-rays negative, so just got to fight through the pain.”
