Draymond Green with an extended quote on DeMarcus Cousins’ defense after a 6-block, 3-steal night: “Everyone wanted to talk shit about DeMarcus’ defense. I told y’all last game, we hadn’t played with energy.” pic.twitter.com/xayUs1ESWD
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) March 9, 2019
The Warriors defense hasn’t exactly been sharp as of late. That all changed on Saturday, when Golden State put together one of their best defensive performances of the season, holding a stellar Nuggets team to just 37.9 percent shooting in a 122-105 win.
As the newcomer, DeMarcus Cousins has taken the lion’s share of the blame for the Warriors’ defensive woes, even though Golden State has ranked in the middle of the pack defensively all season. Cousins had a spectacular defensive effort on Saturday, accumulating six blocks and three steals, but Draymond Green denounced the narrative that he was the issue to begin with.
“Everybody wants to talk shit about DeMarcus’ defense,” Green said. “I told y’all last game, we haven’t played with energy. Everybody wanna…’It’s a problem when DeMarcus is out there.’ Yet, everyone picked the energy up, all of the sudden no one is talking about DeMarcus is a problem defensively. Now it’s a good matchup for him. That’s bullshit man.”
“I think it pissed him off. He’s a competitor. He’s one of those guys that’s been misunderstood his whole career because he competes and he wears his emotions on his sleeve. In saying that, like I said before: Our entire team played better defense. Everybody want to single one guy out, but our entire team defense was horrible the last two weeks, and everybody picked that up tonight, and obviously he shined on that end as well but everyone picked it up.”
