Steph was heated during that last timeout pic.twitter.com/EidCUsygvD
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) March 12, 2021
In the Warriors’ first game back from the All-Star break on Thursday night, there was a video of Stephen Curry that went viral. It wasn’t the usual hesitation, stepback three, or a gravity-defying layup; Curry was yelling at his teammates with the sort of exasperation and urgency that you rarely see him display.
After Sunday’s 131-119 win over a first-place Utah Jazz team which has now lost three of four, Draymond Green shared what Curry was yelling at his teammates.
“I’m not sure if the cameras caught what he was saying, but he was saying, ‘Get into the ball,’” Green said. “It was a lot more animated than that, but he was saying, ‘get into the ball.’ And tonight, I think we can see that from the beginning of the game that we were into the ball and it changed our entire game; defense obviously, but changed the entire game for us.”
Curry was also asked about the exchange, saying he was pleased with how his teammates took it into Sunday’s game.
“That was part of the message, so every individual has got to take that and do something with it,” Curry said. “So I like the way we responded. Now it’s about the message of the season. Now it’s about putting a couple of games in a row with that type of effort and focus and intensity and sustaining it.”
He said the challenge of consistent leadership is getting out of his own head and his own performance, and saying something that resonates for the rest of the team.
“It’s kind of hard to catalog, it’s just, you have an energy, you have a presence, timeliness with what you say,” Curry said. “All those things. Sometimes you got to get out of your own way a little bit too, where, whether I’m playing well or not or whatever the case is, it’s about the bigger message about where we’re going so you got to keep that in mind, through that game to game up and down emotional rollercoaster that we’ve been on.”
