Draymond Green ejected, Warriors offense throttled in loss to Knicks
Draymond Green ejected, Warriors offense throttled in loss to Knicks
Tough one.
Coming into the game against the New York Knicks, the Golden State Warriors knew they were going to be facing a stout defense. And that’s exactly what they ran into.
The Warriors took a 119-104 loss, which was the resurgent Knicks’ third straight win. It’s kind of cool to see - the old shadows of those ‘90’s New York team’s defense casting a welcome shade over a franchise that has been wilting under decades of poor management decisions.
Though a lot of chatter will be drawn to the (admittedly bad) ejection of Draymond Green, the game was still already leaning away from Golden State. This Knicks team is legit. They’ve got solid individual defenders, and a well-coached team. They hung a 40-point first quarter on the Warriors with Green; and then held the Dubs to a 19-point third quarter following his ejection.
Here’s the ejection.
Draymond got thrown out of the game for yelling at his own guy (Green’s second technical foul on the evening).
That’s first-year NBA referee John Butler, doing work.
We’ll see if the technical sticks or not, but it was a tough and untimely loss for a Warriors team that was trying to claw back into the game.
The Warriors are off tomorrow, but the LGW team will be back with full coverage of the game. For now, let it all out!
Looked to me like the team started off missing a couple plays due to bad luck or slipped focus while the Knicks made a couple lucky shots, then the foul calls and the ejection compounded everyone's mental fatigue. There were a lot of mental mistakes, sloppy passes and bad coverage, especially after Draymond was out. That's probably why the team as a whole shot badly from 3 and at the FT line. Bunch of guys looked like they were pretty done with the game long before it was officially over. So, I'm going to chalk this one up to painful refereeing making a back-to-back suck to play, and figure it's not a sign of lasting problems.
Even with all that, we weren't that far off from making this one a game. So I think we're still in good shape to make the playoffs, though with how crowded the middle of the West is right now, every L hurts.
Duby, I gotta quibble with this:
“Though a lot of chatter will be drawn to the (admittedly bad) ejection of Draymond Green, the game was still already leaning away from Golden State.“
When Draymond was ejected with 1:18 left in Q2, the Warriors were down by just 5 points. Just 40 seconds earlier, they had overcome a 10 point deficit to tie it at 55-55. At that point, it felt (to me at least) like W’s had momentum, but at a minimum it felt like anybody’s ball game.