NEW ORLEANS -- Draymond Green followed the Warriors' 134-123 win over the Pelicans by doubling down on his comments about his team's performance this season, and defended his leadership style.
"A lot of former players who ain't never led s--t blew it out of proportion," the Warriors forward said Monday night after his team's first victory of the season. "We sucked, and we're still not very good, but I actually know how to lead my entire life, so those that have never led should probably not talk about leading, but we just got to continue to get better."
Green's comments came less than 24 hours after he said Golden State "f---ing suck" after a 120-92 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Through the first four minutes of that game, the Warriors were outscored 15-3, allowing the Thunder to shoot 56 percent in the first half as they took a 70-37 lead into halftime.
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Entering Monday, the Warriors had been outscored 261-214 in their first two games. That bad start caused NBA observers to question Golden State's playoff candidacy, which irked the team.
"Everybody loves to label you when you're down and when you're losing," Warriors guard Stephen Curry said. "That's easy. It's easy to go on TV and say whatever you want to. Just throw darts at a team that's trying to figure it out based on how much success we've had, so I'd hope people can kind of see through that and understand what we're about as a team and we're going to build towards.
"Say whatever you want to say to fill that 24-hour news cycle. That's cool with us, but we're still going to hoop and play basketball."
Still, Green -- who finished with 16 points, 10 assists and 17 rebounds -- wasn't satisfied.
Golden State Warriors
"We're still not a very good team," he said. "We have a lot of room for improvement. Just because we won one game doesn't mean that we don't suck. We still have a lot of improvement."
No longer the prohibitive favorites to win the NBA championship, the Warriors have one of the youngest rosters in the league. Of their eight summer additions, just three have playoff experience and two are over the age of 26.
While Green sees growth in the roster, he believes the team still has a ways to go to get back to standard.
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"Compete as a team and compete at a high level," Green said. "First two nights, we didn't do that. Tonight, we did, but we still have a lot of room for improvement.
"Some people look at it as a negative -- depends on how you look at it. It's a negative or a positive. I know this team has a lot of improvement to do, and we plan on doing it."