San Francisco – The Warriors continue to dominate at home, every player on the roster scored. So much for the pep talk Golden State’s head coach Steve Kerr gave on a possible letdown game. Tonight, the Warriors controlled the pace and the game throughout the night for the 97-84 win over the Charlotte Hornets.
The Warriors have won 10 of their last 12 games overall and four of their last five home contests. Golden State scored a season-low 97 points (prev. 101, 11/14 vs. MIN), marking the first time this season they have scored fewer than 100 points. Indiana is now the only team this season who has scored 100-plus points in every game.
ON THE DIFFERENCE IN THEIR DEFENSE OF LATE:
“We just stopped gambling,” said Gary Payton II. “There’s a lot of gambling that’s stopped and just been solid. Basically the basics. Try to play for 24 seconds on the shot clock, get down, and watch the possession, and when the shot goes up, you got to box out and hit somebody, and grab the rebound, and go. If we limit them to one-shot possessions, it’s going to be pretty tough to keep up with us. Especially when we get into transition and go, and we keep the turnovers low, helps us out on transition D. We can set up our halfcourt defense which is pretty good, and keep getting to that over and over again as many times as we can, we’ll put ourselves in a great position.”
ON HOLDING THE HORNETS TO 84 POINTS TONIGHT:
“I think in the modern NBA if you don’t give up threes and you don’t let them shoot free throws you got a pretty good chance,” Brandon Podziemski said. “They only shot 11 free throws the whole game and shot 28 percent from three. So I think we did a pretty good job coming just trying to limit Tre Mann and Brandon Miller. Trying to show them a lot of bodies and I think we did that for the most part. The only kind of scored really when we turned the ball over so I think in the second half we did a better job of not turning it over so the lead expanded.”
Up Next: The Warriors host the Denver Nuggets on Sunday, February 25 at4 p.m.
Notes:
The Warriors celebrated HBCU night, acknowledging the success of black colleges and foundations who support them. A special halftime performance by members of Greek organizations represent a special bond among men and women.
Kerr’s new contract extension makes him highest paid coach in the NBA
The Golden State Warriors extended head coach Steve Kerr’s contract through 2 years making him the highest paid coach in the NBA. It was reported earlier this evening by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. Kerr will continue his tenure with the organization, marking this season as his 10th year coaching the Warriors. Kerr is set to make 17.5 million a year and the deal will run through the 2025-26 year.
A humble Kerr didn’t mention his contract extension but instead talked about a talk with his team on the danger of tonight being a letdown game. This with the Charlette Hornets winning four consecutive games. Kerr looking ahead at what could happen sat his team down about the possibilities of becoming too confident.
“Yeah, it’s exactly what I just told our team,” said Kerr. “I said the good news is we’re now good enough to have a letdown game. We weren’t good enough to have a letdown game a couple of weeks ago. But now we are. We’re playing well on both ends. But this is a natural letdown game, second night of a back-to-back, Denver coming in on Sunday. It would be really easy for our guys to let their guard down. Charlotte’s coming in here hot, four in a row, defense looks totally different than how they looked a few weeks ago. So we’re going to have to play well, we’re going to have to be sharp, and that was the warning right away with our meeting today.”
Photo by GSW/Twitter
