Following Steph Curry's blunt assessment of the Warriors on Dec. 30, his teammate Draymond Green couldn't help but agree Golden State has been "very mid" this season.
And while that can be hard to accept, Green believes Curry's honesty will help the Warriors play better moving forward.
"Listen, when [Curry] said that and I read it, I was like, 'Oh'. And I sat and started thinking about it," Green told co-host Baron Davis on "The Draymond Green Show." "I'm like, 'Yeah, I get what he's saying. I get where he's coming from. We are definitely right at .500, right in the middle of the pack, very mid.' And we heard him, and I think we've played a little better since. But again, it's still got to equal stacking wins together, and we haven't done that. ...
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"Like he said, when you're going through it, you never want to really accept that you're mid or that you're not a good team, or whatever it is. It's a hard pill to accept, and we haven't accepted it because we still think we've got a chance that we could right the ship, but it's tough. So for him to just come out and say, 'Hey, it's a real elephant in the room -- we're mid right now.' Like, all right. So now what? Now that we can acknowledge that, what [do]we got to do to figure this out and get better."
Curry's comments came after the Warriors' 113-95 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, perfectly summing up Golden State's lackluster season following an encouraging 12-3 start. After the Dec. 30 loss, the Warriors were 16-16 entering the new year.
“As the kids say, we’re very mid right now,” Curry said. “We’re just very average.”
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Now, Curry and Co. are six games into 2025 and since have gone -- you guessed it -- 3-3. But Green believes acknowledging their middle-of-the-pack status and recognizing the need to improve it will benefit the Warriors in the long run.
"Another thing that it does is it can also give guys confidence, because it gives them that freedom to be like, 'Yo, yes, no pressure. It's what we need to do. Yeah, right,' " Green said. "And so then they don't have to live up to the pressure that's been created by what we've done, you know? Because that's a thing -- you come [to the Warriors] and you feel like you need to live up to the pressure of what we've been, and that's not a realistic thing, man. And so I think that that also helps with that."
No matter how the Warriors look at it, accepting that the team is average can be a humbling experience. But humility often is the key to success, and there's plenty of season left for 10th-place Golden State to make its way up the Western Conference standings.