Warriors’ Steve Kerr Addresses Draymond Green Benching

With 6:46 to go in the third quarter in Friday’s Golden State Warriors loss to the Pistons, forward Draymond Green went to the bench, replaced by LJ Cryer. The Warriors had put up a fight in Detroit, and were leading after the first quarter, but the game had been slipping away, and the Warriors were down, 69-56, when Green hit the bench.

Gary Payton Jr. made a 3-pointer on the next possession, but from there, the Warriors’ offense ground to a halt. They did not make another field goal for the next three-and-a-half minutes, and when they did, they were down by 16 points. With Kristaps Porzingis injured again–a back problem this time–and another game on Saturday against the Hawks in Atlanta, Kerr decided to keep Green benched for the duration of what looked like a sure loss.

Of course, with the mass of injuries that have sunk the Warriors since mid-January when Jimmy Butler tore his ACL, the concern was that something was wrong, too, with Green. But Kerr explained in his postgame press conference that Green is fine: “Back-to-back. Saving him for tomorrow.”

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Draymond Green Back vs. Hawks

The Warriors will need as much Draymond Green as they can get, as they could have a skeleton crew on hand for Saturday in Atlanta after the back injury to Porzingis. He tweaked his back during the Pistons game, and the injury was aggravated when he took a shove during a fight for a rebound, and had to go out to the locker room. Porzingis played 11 minutes with five points on 1-for-5 shooting on Friday.

“I started feeling it from the first quarter,” Porzingis said. “And it started spasm-ing up a little bit when I would try to move. When I was warming up I was OK, but the one play, I felt a little spasm.”

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Warriors Without Kristaps Porzingis Again?

Porzingis said he had some back issues early in his career, but that he had managed it. After tinkering with the idea of playing in a back-to-back for the Warriors on Friday and Saturday, though, it does not look like Porzingis will play against the Hawks, the team that traded him to Golden State.

Porzingis said the back got tighter on him after he came out of the game and cooled down, and he expected it to continue to do so. He left open some hope that, “Maybe it loosens up tomorrow.”

Golden State traded for Porzingis on February 5, at the NBA trade deadline. The Warriors have played 19 games since then, and Porzingis has been healthy for just seven. He has missed four games with a calf injury, six games with an illness, two games for rest and now could miss a game for a tweaked back.

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Warriors Injuries Were Too Much

The Warriors also lost G League big man Malevy Leons to a wrist injury during the loss to the Pistons, and his status is unknown. The new injuries were disappointing for Kerr because the team had begun the game playing well.

“I thought we were hanging in there first half. But when (Porzingis) went out, obviously, taking away our space 5 against a great defensive team, it was gonna be hard to find openings,” Kerr said. “And second half, just got away from us. They turned us over. (Ausar) Thompson was fantastic on the ball, just a wrecking crew out there.

“Disappointing, because I felt good coming into the game. I didn’t think we made good decisions early, and that kinda set a tone. We were playing pretty well, knocking down some shots and doing some good things. But we just set a poor tone with the turnovers and that really got away from us in the second half.”

 

 

Sean Deveney is a veteran sports reporter covering the NBA, NFL and MLB for Heavy.com. He has written for Heavy since 2019 and has more than two decades of experience covering the NBA, including 17 years as the lead NBA reporter for the Sporting News. Deveney is the author of 7 nonfiction books, including “Fun City,” “Before Wrigley became Wrigley,” and “Facing Michael Jordan.” More about Sean Deveney