Warriors coach Steve Kerr offered a blunt assessment of his team's performance after yet another road loss, calling out his squad for lacking competitiveness, joy and "collective grit."
Golden State dropped to 0-8 in road games and 6-9 overall this season after falling to Phoenix on Wednesday night. Despite Stephen Curry scoring a game-high 50 points, the Warriors never truly threatened the Suns, who cruised to a 130-119 victory.
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During his postgame media availability, Kerr told reporters that Golden State isn't going to hit the panic button, but he acknowledged that players aren't on the same page.
"It's a pick-up game out there," Kerr said. "There's no execution at either end, no sort of commitment to the group to get three stops in a row, to execute on offense. It obviously starts with me. I'm the coach of the team. ...
"There's no collective grit. We lack grit right now. When you don't have grit, the game is really easy for the other team. These are NBA players. They spend all summer shooting thousands of jump shots just like our guys do. When those jumpers are easy and the game is easy and they don't feel any physicality, it's a Drew League game."
Steve Kerr isn’t panicking despite comparing the Warriors’ play to a pick-up game pic.twitter.com/4IBjzszjNZ
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) November 17, 2022
Curry, who is now second in the league in scoring (32.8 points per game) behind only Luka Doncic (34.4), expressed confidence that the Warriors will be able to get back on the right track, but he admitted that "losing does get old really quick."
"Losing becomes habit if you don't fix it," Curry said. "We've avoided that for a very long time in terms of that creeping into the locker room and losing mentality. I think we're very aware of who we are, what our potential is, the fact that you can't stay in this kind of vibe or mode for too long and not really prove that you can be that type of team."
"Losing becomes habit if you don't fix it."
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) November 17, 2022
- Steph on trying to get out of the losing mentality pic.twitter.com/ouVcLKQhKc
Golden State will head back home and face the Knicks on Friday before hitting the road for back-to-back Western Conference matchups against the Rockets and Pelicans on Sunday and Monday.
