Draymond Green does not think the Warriors can take it easy

Draymond Green doesn’t always agree with his teammates or coaches.

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr recently said that his team was playing with “house money” this season, and that didn’t sit too well with forward Draymond Green.

“I definitely don’t approach it like we’re playing with house money,” he said to ESPN. “We do have three championships. They’re all in the past. It’s about approaching each year with that same goal and that same mentality. And the point you get to the point where ‘oh, man, we’re just playing house money, we already got it,’ you’re done.”

Kerr was mainly trying to ease the pressure off of his players, because there will be a lot of that going on in the media. But Green’s point is well taken too.

Kerr doesn’t think this will be the final run for this group and says that it’s absurd to compare them to the 97-98 Chicago Bulls. The Warriors will have to battle boredom this year until the playoffs arrive, but they better focus more than they did last season when they were nearly bounced out of the Western Conference Finals by the Houston Rockets. If Chris Paul had stayed healthy, then the narrative might be quite different this offseason.

The fact of the matter, though, is that the Warriors might be even better than they were last year. In a stunning free agency coup, they added DeMarcus Cousins to their roster, and that gives them five All-Stars to go into battle with. Cousins probably won’t get on the court until around the trade deadline, but that will be a fearsome lineup of players to go up against in the playoffs.

Green and Klay Thompson are eligible for extensions next summer, and Kevin Durant will be a free agent. So there are no guarantees. But this group seems like they have decent enough chemistry to stay together for at least a couple more seasons. However, things change quickly, and that’s why Draymond wants his teammates to live in the moment.