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00:00Well, let's go to DJ in San Jose. Hi, DJ. What's going on?
00:04Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call.
00:09Thank you, DJ.
00:10I think we really noticed, like, specifically the lack of GP2 yesterday
00:17because we could not get a stop in the fourth quarter.
00:21It seemed like Stephen Castle was having his way with Curry,
00:27scoring whenever he wanted to.
00:28And then I think Post is just probably out of the rookies.
00:33Like, he plays the least like a rookie.
00:35Like, if someone's going to put a shot up at the end,
00:38that would count on his shot going in the most,
00:41even though Pods isn't playing pretty well.
00:44But I don't know about Pods.
00:47I mean, he's Pods.
00:53DJ, I'm sorry I'm laughing.
00:54That might be the best analysis that we've ever heard on 95.7 The Game.
00:58You're right.
00:59Pods is – pause.
01:01Pods.
01:02What does that mean, though, DJ?
01:04Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
01:08I think it's been a good thing recently because I didn't really believe in him
01:11like Steve Kerr did.
01:13And if you look at his college stats, he was a really good shooter and everything.
01:16But the beginning of the season was awful for him.
01:20And I didn't even think he belonged in the NBA.
01:22But if you look at the last few games, I mean, he's part of the reason we're winning.
01:28I think –
01:29Yeah, go ahead, DJ.
01:30No, I mean –
01:33But, I mean, at the same time, I wouldn't depend on him for a huge shot.
01:36Like, he's very inconsistent.
01:39And that – he has, like, one move.
01:41Like, that slow motion move.
01:42Like, when people start planning for that in the playoff, like,
01:46he's not going to get that off at all.
01:49Yeah, DJ, thanks.
01:50I don't really see it that way at all.
01:52I don't think he has been inconsistent of late.
01:55He's been very consistent of late.
01:57And I think sophomores playing this way at the beginning of a year
02:01is actually not unprecedented at all.
02:05So, you know, I think if you're a real Warrior fan,
02:09I don't – I'm not going to let last night suddenly discourage everything
02:14that Brandon Pajemski has been in the second half of this year
02:17and certainly what he has been post-trade deadline
02:20with Jimmy Butler on the roster.
02:22He's been a very, very good asset for the Warriors.
02:25And I don't think that his moves are going to, like,
02:30disintegrate in the playoffs and all these things.
02:32It's funny.
02:33The playoffs are different.
02:34There's no question.
02:36Sometimes I think I hear people talk about them
02:38as if they're a completely different sport.
02:40Like, these role players, they're going to be allowed to play in the playoffs.
02:46And they better.
02:47And they better.
02:47These shots are going to have to fall, or the Warriors will lose.
02:51Like, it's not all on Steph and Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green.
02:55It can't be.
02:56Well, and if it is, you're going to lose.
02:58Yeah.
02:58Because you're playing five on five.
03:00And so the other two guys who are out there on the floor
03:02are going to have to contribute and at least do more than what happened last night.
03:08And, you know, Pods has been great.
03:09Last night, three of 11 from the floor, one of five from three.
03:13He was not terrific in that game.
03:15And so you look at Moody.
03:17Moody was not great.
03:18Kaminga was okay.
03:20Maybe even a little subpar to my eye.
03:23And so if you take all of the other players not named Steph, Draymond, and Jimmy,
03:27none of them were really that great.
03:29And yet you still had a chance to win the game.
03:31And then your great players, in the moment where you needed greatness from the greats,
03:35they didn't perform.
03:36I mean, Draymond hit two free throws, you had late turnovers,
03:39and you didn't score a basket the last three minutes.
03:43And that's why you lost.
03:46That's crazy.
03:47That's crazy.
03:48But again, I'll keep saying this.
03:51If you end up in a tie game with three minutes to go, I don't care who you're playing.
03:55That game's going to go either way.
03:57That game can go either way.
03:59Those are NBA players.
04:01And like, for instance, he just brought up, it's like, oh, this guy, Stephon Castle,
04:04was cooking Steph Curry.
04:06Do you know who Stephon, that's going to be the rookie of the year.
04:08He's really good.
04:09Dude, he's really good.
04:10And he's a really difficult one-on-one cover.
04:13And Steph Curry is not a great defender.
04:15So that was not surprising at all.
04:19Not at all.
04:20That the likes of Curry and Pods, people who are not your best defenders,
04:24were having a hard time with the San Antonio Spurs backcourt,
04:28I didn't find that to be puzzling at all.
04:31The puzzling part to me is that, again, the offense went stagnant.
04:36This has been the story for three years with the Warriors.
04:39If Steph's off the court, the offense went totally stagnant.
04:43They have a penchant for doing that.
04:45It has hurt them before.
04:47It will probably hurt them again.
04:49It hurt them last night.
04:50I don't think they lost the game in the last three minutes.
04:53I thought they lost it in the first three minutes of the fourth quarter.
04:56They had a 12-point lead, and they just kicked it.
04:58They completely kicked it with Steph off the floor.
05:01But you get to the last three minutes, and that's where you as a veteran team
05:05at home in a win situation that would be very, very big,
05:09you expect more than what they delivered.
05:11And I'm looking at the game log.
05:13Curry scores in a finger roll.
05:14Draymond steal.
05:15Draymond turnover.
05:16Curry miss.
05:17Butler a couple of free throws.
05:19Draymond turnover.
05:20Butler a couple of free throws.
05:22Curry turnover.
05:23And then Draymond hits the two free throws.
05:26And then HB hits the three to beat you.
05:28You had no more field goals after the Steph Curry finger roll.
05:31He missed a three.
05:32And I do believe that was the last shot that you actually took.
05:36And I know that Jimmy Butler took two shots and got fouled.
05:38Those don't count.
05:39And he made all four free throws.
05:41But other than that, you had no other field goal attempt.
05:44Well, and one of those trips to the free throw line
05:46was for an over-the-back call at the other end.
05:49It wasn't even an attempt.
05:51You know, it wasn't even an offensive set.
05:53Like, he got fouled with Castle going over the back
05:55on the other end of the floor
05:57and ended up on the free throw line.
05:59So, yeah, their offense stopped.
06:01You still ended up tied with three seconds to go.
06:04And a hero ball shot beat you.
06:07And nine times out of ten, that's not going to go in.
06:09But it did.
06:10It did.
06:11You know what I mean?
06:12So, like, again, I think everybody can feel very equally uncomfortable
06:18with what took place last night.
06:20I don't take last night to mean anything fearful down the road
06:26in terms of the way the Warriors play basketball.
06:28I don't.
06:30I just, the concern level for me is the fact that they have now,
06:34they've welcomed the nightmare into the room.
06:37That's why last night was so bad.
06:40And I don't think it means, oh, the Warriors now can't play in the playoffs
06:44or they can't beat this team.
06:46Or, man, if they're tired, how do you expect them to go on a playoff run?
06:50Because the playoffs are different and you have no back-to-backs
06:52and they have a completely different flow to them.
06:55And the Warriors have experience doing it.
06:57And I give them a really good shot in the playoffs.
07:00But the problem is, is they've got to get there.
07:02And last night brought the nightmare into the room.
07:06Well, for me, the nightmare was the fact that
07:08you had a second quarter and a fourth quarter
07:11where you just let them come back at the game.
07:13In a game at home where, yes, you were on the second half of a back-to-back,
07:17but it didn't seem to matter until the end of the game.
07:19And now, all of a sudden, we're going to claim fatigue?
07:23That, for me, in game 80 is unacceptable.
07:25Even if you are tired, it doesn't mean that you lack the ability to actually make a basket
07:30and you make the plays that you made.
07:32And if you're that tired, then they all should have sat.
07:35You sit Draymond, you sit Steph, you sit whoever else was tired,
07:39and you go out there and you play your younger guys
07:42because Kaminga was not tired.
07:44He didn't play great.
07:45But life doesn't work that way.
07:46No, but life works the way you want it to work.
07:48But you can't, like, play them and then also say, well, they were tired.
07:53No, like, sure you can.
07:54Like, you try.
07:56You try.
07:57You give it everything you've got on that night.
07:59I don't think, look, the only reason this would be an excuse is if the Warriors used it.
08:05The Warriors are not going to come out and say, oh, we lost because we were tired.
08:08Right.
08:08But I can watch the game and, as an observation, be like, ooh,
08:12great players getting sloppy at the end.
08:15That looks like mental and physical fatigue to me.
08:18Not like in a, wow, preventative, you're not even able to play sort of a way,
08:23but it helps explain some of the acts that went down toward the end to me.
08:29Again, so it's not an excuse.
08:30You're right.
08:31It's totally unacceptable.
08:32I would phrase this as the worst loss of the year.
08:35They know that.
08:36They can't.
08:36You can't do that.
08:38You can't do that.
08:38But it doesn't prevent the facts from being the facts,
08:41which is that the Warriors are an older team.
08:43They've been asked to do something pretty heroic over these last couple of weeks with the lengthy road trip,
08:50the difficulty of the opponents, the way the standings are laying out.
08:54And for the most part, they've handled those couple of weeks really well.
08:59Last night, they really, really didn't.
09:02Last night, they really fumbled the damn rock.
09:04And we can ask Steve Curtin at 5 about the idea of fatigue because I look at Moses Moody at 22,
09:10and yet he's playing the same amount of games, but he's 22, and he was 0 for 3.
09:17He was a minus 17 in the fourth quarter.
09:19And Pods, who was 0 for 3 and a minus 11.
09:22So are they as tired at 22 as a 37-year-old Steph Curry?
09:26I don't think so.
09:27I don't buy it.
09:28See, but I think we're talking about two different things.
09:30With Moody and Pods, we're talking about missed shots.
09:33Right.
09:34We're also talking about wild ineffectiveness where when you're playing, the team is getting gashed.
09:39But I'm talking about the slop, the slop of the passes in the fourth quarter.
09:44Again, if we go back to the way Steve Kerr spoke about Steph Curry two weeks ago,
09:49he said, when I see that from Steph, it's a sign of exhaustion.
09:53Again, I don't know.
09:54Like, I'm just taking those words to be like, he knows them better than we do.
09:59Yeah.
09:59So, like, that's...
10:00You're applying those words, though, to last night.
10:02Right.
10:03But just to those three.
10:04Just to the older guys.
10:06The younger guys, I think, just missed their shots.
10:08I think they just had a bad night.
10:10You know?
10:10And Moses, maybe it's more than one night.
10:12Moses is in a slump.
10:14He's got to get out of it.
10:16You've got to keep shooting.
10:17You've got to see the bottom of the net.
10:19And then he'll get going.
10:20I hope.
10:22If he doesn't, they've got a problem.
10:24Because they need those guys to knock down shots.
10:27The def...
10:27I heard Slater say this this morning.
10:29The defenses in the NBA in 2025 are going to do this.
10:33You're going to funnel the ball to those two guys, Moody and Pods, and when they're in there,
10:39the JKs, the Posts, and the Santoses of the world, they're going to funnel the ball to them
10:45because they're going to live with, kind of like what the Lakers did last week.
10:49It's like, if that guy can beat us, if Pods can score 30, okay, salute, you win.
10:54But let's see it.
10:56Because it's a hell of a lot less likely than one of the big three doing it.
10:59So those guys have got to hit shots, they didn't last night.
11:01They combined for 14 points on 6 of 22.
11:04Exactly.
11:04And they were 2 of 12 from 3.
11:05So that, for me, has little to do with fatigue.
11:09And if you want to talk about the last two minutes of the game,
11:12and you've got two Hall of Famers who made sloppy plays.
11:16Jimmy Butler played all 12 minutes of the fourth quarter.
11:18For me, it was not about fatigue.
11:20It was about a lack of execution.
11:22And it was really more about the early part of the fourth quarter
11:25and the early part of the second quarter where you as a team did not handle business
11:29and you let San Antonio hang around.
11:31And that's what Steph actually said in the postgame.
11:34He's like, when you give any team a chance and then you give them a second chance
11:38and you get down to the wire, well, anything can happen.
11:41So for me, it's less about the last two minutes.
11:43But I'm not citing fatigue at all.
11:45I think we're saying the same thing, though.
11:47But I'm not going to say that they retired.
11:48It's not about fatigue.
11:49It's about lack of execution.
11:50And I'm telling you that lack of execution is affected by your fatigue.
11:53And that's where I would disagree with you.
11:55I don't know how you can.
11:56You're not them.
11:57Because I don't know how tired they are.
11:59And for me, however tired you are, that's no excuse.
12:02It's not an excuse.
12:03You're making it an excuse.
12:04I'm not making an excuse.
12:05You're putting something out there that they're not saying.
12:08You're saying that they were tired.
12:09They're not saying they're tired.
12:11Yes, they are.
12:12Draymond Green.
12:13Did they say that last night?
12:14You can see it.
12:15They can barely answer questions afterward.
12:17They didn't say it is the answer.
12:18Of course they won't because they're professionals.
12:20They're not idiots.
12:21They're not going to say that at a press conference.
12:23You're making that excuse for them, and I'm not here for them.
12:26I'm not.
12:26That's all I'm saying.
12:27Listen to what I'm about to say.
12:28I'm hearing your whole thing.
12:29I can't make an excuse for them.
12:31I'm not them.
12:32I don't have to make an excuse for them.
12:34But you are.
12:35I'm not.
12:36I'm literally saying what my observation is.
12:39Right.
12:39It's not an excuse.
12:40I'm not them.
12:41I don't answer for them.
12:42I don't have to do anything for them.
12:44I'm not them.
12:45I didn't make any mistakes last night.
12:47I went to my lady's house, ate a beautiful dinner, had a wonderful old-fashioned that
12:52she made for me, sat next to her, loved our time together, and the Warriors lost.
12:57I didn't do a damn thing last night.
12:59Right.
12:59I don't need to make excuses for anyone.
13:02You might have been fatigued, but it wouldn't matter.
13:02Actually, I was.
13:03You know.
13:04I've been fighting a little cough this week.
13:06No doubt.
13:06It's tough.
13:06And I think you gave it to me, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse.
13:09I actually was up from 3.30 to 5 this morning coughing.
13:13Yeah, no doubt.
13:13But I'm here.
13:14Yeah.
13:15I'm here.
13:15And you know what?
13:16At 5.30, I'm probably going to be sick of this process, but we're going to finish,
13:21and we're going to do the best we can, because that's what we do.
13:23And if you're fatigued at 5.30, then honestly, I don't care.
13:27It's no excuse.
13:28Exactly.
13:29Do the show.
13:30And I will.
13:31And I'm not here to excuse the Warriors.
13:34So I am going to kindly ask today, right now at 2.51, let's remove this from the conversation.
13:42Willard's making excuses.
13:44I'm not them.
13:45I don't give a rip.
13:46I don't give a rip what the reason was.
13:49All I can do is tell you what I saw and what I see over a two-week period.
13:55I see an older team that is going through what we've called a gauntlet.
13:59I see it affecting them some.
14:01It's not an excuse.
14:02It's an observation.
14:04And y'all can do whatever you want with it after that.
14:06Well, what I'm going to do with it is I'm going to reject it, and I'm going to say that that is weak.
14:11Wonderful.
14:11It's weak sauce, and they're not saying it, and I'm not—
14:16Of course not.
14:16Why would they say that publicly?
14:18Well, why would you say it publicly?
14:19Because that's what I see.
14:20Exactly.
14:21You know what I see?
14:22I see big-time players who did not make big-time plays, and I'm not going to be able to project
14:27their relative fatigue because if you play a basketball game and you're out there playing,
14:33there's an expectation for you to play the game.
14:36And I'm not going to sit there and say, oh, boy, you are so fatigued.
14:40Let me ask you a question.
14:41How can we look at that and expect anything other than what they gave us?
14:45Because darn it, it's game 80, and he's old, and he's just—he's all tuckered out.
14:51And if you'd listen to me one time—
14:52I've been listening the whole time.
14:53I've never said anything like that.
14:54That's patently absurd that I sound like that.
14:56You said that they're tired.
14:57Right.
14:58Right.
14:58But you're mimicking back of that is, oh, we can't win.
15:03No one's doing that.
15:05Let me ask you a question because you said it's unacceptable to play this way down the
15:09stretch.
15:09What's your observation as to why?
15:12Because they didn't make the plays.
15:14That's not a reason.
15:15Well, the reason is that—
15:17Why did great players suddenly make horrible plays at the end of the game?
15:22In your opinion, just tell me what you see.
15:25Because they were sloppy.
15:25They were sloppy.
15:26Okay.
15:26Now, were they sloppy?
15:28Because he's all tuckered out?
15:30I don't know that.
15:31I saw lazy plays.
15:33I saw Draymond save a pass and then try to make a play in a live ball turnover, and you
15:39gave up a three.
15:40And beyond that, what I saw was an offense that was completely stuck in the mud, and Steph
15:45Curry couldn't find a way to get a bucket, nor could Draymond.
15:49Jimmy got to the foul line, and that's about all you have.
15:52Like, if you don't have a why, that's fine.
15:55But do you have a why?
15:55I could guess a why, but I'm not going to say it's—
15:58They were tired.
15:59Okay, so what would it be?
16:00It was the fact that early in the fourth quarter and early in the second quarter, the reserves
16:05didn't do them any favors, and they could not make shots.
16:08And that put a lot of pressure on the regulars, and then when they came in, things got tight,
16:13and they couldn't get it done.
16:14Yeah.
16:14I'm not going to say that, oh boy, they were tired after 23 minutes in Phoenix, in a game
16:19where you didn't even have to try.
16:21They looked tired to me.
16:22That's all.
16:23Just an observation.
16:23Just an observation.
16:23Just an observation.