Draymond Green and Klay Thompson have addressed the Golden State Warriors’ collapse against the Boston Celtics in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday.
Golden State led by as much as 15 points late in the third quarter, but it all came undone when Boston blitzed them 40-16 in the fourth, fuelled by a series of huge shots down the stretch from Al Horford and friends, all of which required extraordinary amounts of testicular fortitude.
Despite going from 15 points up to 15 down, Draymond Green insisted the Warriors still had the upper hand for the most part.
“We pretty much dominated the game for the first 41, 42 minutes,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”
READ MORE: NBA Players React To Wild Game 1 of NBA Finals
Green, who was presumably saving some even spicier comments for his podcast later, hinted there was no way Al Horford, Marcus Smart and Derrick White would shoot 15-23 from three again in this series.
He was also quick to deny that losing Game 1 at home would affect his team’s confidence.
“Nah, it’s fun, you get a chance to do something else, do it in a different way, embrace the challenge,” he said.
“We’ve always embraced challenges and we’ll embrace this one. So no, it’s no hit to our confidence at all, not one bit.”
Meanwhile, Klay Thompson said that while the loss didn’t necessarily put a dent in the Warriors’ confidence, it did sting.
“That was a tough loss, especially the way we did lose,” Thompson said. “Squandering a 15-point lead… [that’s] very, very rare for us.
“It’s not the end of the world, we’ll regroup and bring a much better effort on Sunday … It’s never fun, and it hurts on the biggest stage. But like Draymond said, there’s no reason to panic. I like our chances still.”