The Golden State Warriors fell to the Denver Nuggets 128-123 on Friday night at Chase Center, their arduous second-half comeback cut just short by the sound of the final buzzer.

After the game, Steve Kerr expressed pride in his team's second-half competitive fire. As their head coach saw it, what ultimately doomed the Warriors against Denver was a porous defensive performance in the game's first 24 minutes, a problem sparked mostly by effort and intensity.

“The story of the game is just our lack of defensive intensity from the start,” Kerr said.  “They scored 40 points in the first quarter. They got into such a great rhythm and were clearly the aggressors. We expected them to come out and play like this because of their loss in Utah a couple nights ago. I thought they just came out with way more force than we did and set the tone. At that point, it's tough playing up stream against a great team.”

Draymond Green spearheaded Golden State's comeback on both sides of the ball, covering up countless mistakes all over the floor as a helper while doing yeoman's work checking Nikola Jokic one-on-one. All 13 of his points and most of his nine assists came after halftime. Kerr called his overall defensive performance “fantastic” and his defense “really on point.”

A defiant Green disagreed with that last assessment. Still, he shared Kerr's opinion that the Warriors lost this game early.

“I think we didn't start off with a strong defensive presence. Five minutes into the game they had 20 points. So, that's on me,” Green said. “Whether I was out there or not, we were awful defensively.”

Green bears far less culpability than most for Golden State's porous first-half defense. So much of his team's relative success on that side of the floor on Friday stemmed from his influence, directly or otherwise. But numbers don't lie, and the Nuggets' offensive rating with Green in the game was 116.4, better than the top-ranked mark in the league last season.

Dig deeper, though, and measured optimism springs. The Warriors' defensive rating after halftime? A stingy 109.4, the type of defensive mettle that would've easily been good enough to win versus the two-time reigning MVP. Golden State just dug itself too deep a hole early.

“I thought the effort overall in the second half is what was lacking in the first,” Kerr said, “and that's what put us in trouble tonight.”