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It's almost that time of year for the Golden State Warriors. And with the playoffs finally approaching, Steph Curry is confident that his team will be able to flip the defensive switch in time to reach its peak on that side of the ball when it matters most.
“What do we got — 18, 19 games left?You should start to see a gradual rise in our defensive efficiency,” he told The Athletic's Anthony Slater on Tuesday.
Golden State enters Tuesday's game against the Boston Celtics with a 109.3 defensive rating, 15th-best in the league. That standing is a far cry from where the team has normally been under Steve Kerr, though it bears mentioning the Warriors finished 11th in defensive rating a season ago before turning it on come playoff time.
A new wrinkle could complicate things for Golden State, though: The ongoing integration of DeMarcus Cousins. But as Curry tells it, it's not on the Warriors' newest All-Star to improve defensively as much as it is the group as a whole.
“Now that he's feeling good, his body is adjusting to playing competitive, live basketball you can kind of nitpick now, and say ‘How can we as a team get better? How can he get better?'” Curry said, per Mark Medina of The Mercury News. “And again this isn't all on DeMarcus. Individually speaking, we all haven't been at our level like we expect to be. That's a collective effort to raise our intensity and our focus on the defensive end, and we'll figure it out.”
Cousins has struggled defensively since debuting with Golden State in mid January, especially in traditional pick-and-roll coverage. Still, the team's defensive rating with him on the court is actually slight lower than its number with him on the bench.
