Warriors forward Draymond Green was forced from Golden State’s 117-91 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday night with a left ankle sprain.
The injury occurred with 4:53 remaining in the second quarter when Green went up for a block on Lakers guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and rolled his ankle after coming down to the floor.
Green tried to stay in the game for a few more moments but was taken out shortly after and did not return.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr indicated after the game that he doesn’t think Green’s ankle injury is too serious.
“I talked to him at halftime. He said he didn’t think it was too bad,” Kerr said.
Prior to the injury, Green was in the midst of his best stretch of the season. Entering Sunday, Green had combined for 30 points, 42 assists and 30 rebounds over his past three games, leading the Warriors to their first three game winning streak of the season.
Green’s latest injury setback came on a night when the Warriors got blown out quickly and were never competitive. Warriors star Stephen Curry said that Green offered a reminder to the rest of his teammates after exiting the game.
“Draymond said it a little bit at halftime, we have to remember even when we’re playing well, we won three in a row, teams still want to beat us and beat us bad,” Curry said. “They still have a lot of memories from the last five, six years.”
Does Curry think teams will ever forget those feelings over time?
“Probably not,” Curry said. “And that’s a great thing because hopefully we’ll be back where we plan to be so, no.”
The Warriors were confident that they could continue their solid play heading into Sunday’s game against a Lakers team they had already beaten once this season, coming back from a 14-point deficit in the fourth quarter on Jan. 18.
“Coming in here having won three in a row, feeling pretty good about things … this was very, very surprising for me,” Kerr said. “But I’ve been in the league long enough to know, too, there’s going to be a handful of games every year that are sort of inexplicable, and this is one you don’t spend too much time on. You flush the toilet and you move on.”
Curry noted that Lakers obviously hadn’t forgotten that loss and was disappointed his team didn’t play better defense at the outset of the game.
“Those disciplines that separate a good team from a great team have to show up,” Curry said. “We’ve done a great job of not fouling teams and then you give the best defense in the league set possessions and easy points and they thrived off of that and they brought a little bit more energy in the first quarter.
“So those little things that we can control — you can’t control makes and misses every night, but you can control being smart defensively, not fouling. You can control your energy and your effort and your competitiveness and we’ve done a really good job of that and all of the sudden tonight we didn’t have any of it. It shows in the score.”