The Golden State Warriors lost to the Los Angeles Lakers 129-101 on Saturday, February 28th. The loss is a hard blow for the team, as this game is an ideal opportunity to close the gap on the current Lakers’ sixth seed. Unfortunately, Steve Kerr’s team is dealing with a lengthy injury report, but they’ve been slow to come out of the gate and work their way back into the game.
In the postgame press conference, Kerr praised the Lakers’ victory, then admitted that Redick’s team played “a great game.”
“I think they’re great,” Kerr said, via Sam Gordon. “They played a great game. They came in here on a three-game losing streak. They were locked in. I think the slow start hurt us because, you know, for us to win right now, we have to rely on energy, win extra possessions, collapse, force turnovers, and we just fell behind. And they were leading the whole game and we just couldn’t get back up.”
When asked about the team’s slow start, which has been an issue in multiple games in recent weeks, Kerr said having a “defensive mentality” is a key factor in ensuring the Warriors don’t fall behind early in games.
“Defensive mentality is the biggest thing. We’ve got to bring some pop and energy on the other end of the court. It just felt like we weren’t as committed to defense,” Kerr said. “… We ran the ball tonight, had 32 assists and had 10 turnovers. It’s not that we didn’t play well. We shot the ball poorly, and like I said, we never played defense in the game. It was just a night where they just completely outplayed us.”
After losing the game, the Warriors are still ranked eighth, 4.5 games behind the sixth-place Lakers, which guarantees that there will be no need to participate in the playoffs in the playoffs. The Warriors still have plenty of time to make up some ground, but it’s going to be a tall order before they get Stephen Curry back in the rotation.
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This article originally appeared on Warriors Wired: Warriors’ Steve Kerr makes confession after loss to Lakers