The Warriors certainly didn’t play their best brand of basketball Saturday as they fell to the Charlotte Hornets in a 120-113 overtime loss at Spectrum Center.
But six games into the 2022-23 NBA season with a 3-3 record, Draymond Green isn’t hitting the panic button -- yet. Still, he knows there’s plenty Golden State needs to improve upon if they want to have a shot at back-to-back NBA championships.
“I felt pretty good,” Green told reporters following the loss after scoring double digits for the fourth time this season.
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“I think we just made some mistakes down the stretch that we can’t have.”
Green put up a phenomenal effort against Charlotte, grabbing 12 points on 6-of-9 shooting from the field with eight rebounds, six assists, three blocks and a steal. But the Golden State had 31 fouls on the night -- the most by the team since 2015 -- and continued to struggle on defense.
A terrific third-quarter stretch got them back in the contest, but errors proved fatal by the game's end.
The mistakes don’t concern Green at the moment, he said, but the time to develop winning habits is now.
“I think it’s just communication issues,” Green said. “And that’s something I know we’re capable of correcting, so it’s not quite something that I’m overly concerned about. But we can’t keep talking about, ‘We need to do it,’ either.
“Six games in, not going to overreact. But we also got to build good habits, and at times we’re doing that, and at times we’re not. So we just need to be more consistent with it.”
When is it no longer too early in the season to panic? Green wasn’t able to pinpoint a hypothetical deadline for when those habits should be established. But he made it clear that the Warriors don’t have long to figure things out.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to be willing to wait much longer and say, ‘Alright, we’ll get there,’ ” Green said. “No, we know what it takes to win a championship. We know the habits that have to be built in order to compete for a championship.
Golden State Warriors
“So hopefully, sooner rather than later.”
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The Warriors will look to improve upon their .500 record and get to work on fixing their mistakes in the second game of their first back-to-back of the season Sunday, when they take on the Detroit Pistons at Little Caesars Arena.