ORACLE ARENA, THEN WARRIORS PRACTICE FACILITY, OAKLAND, CA — The Golden State Warriors were back at the friendly practice confines of Oakland, after spending 10 of 11 games on the road in the frozen East Coast. The team arrived back in the Bay Area last Monday night after the loss to Brooklyn, then took the day off on Tuesday.
BUCKS PRE-GAME
Before Wednesday’s victory against the Bucks, several Warriors talked about how happy they were to be back on the West Coast.
“I think i speak for the entire team,” said head coach Steve Kerr at the pregame presser, “Very nice to see that little orange ball in the sky that we had forgotten existed. It’s good to be home. It’s been a long time.”
In the locker room, Warriors power forward David Lee told LetsGoWarriors.com what his three favorite things coming home were.
“Warm weather, warm weather and warm weather,” Lee joked, “Nah, warm weather, Oracle, and playing at home. Yeah, those three things. We all talked about it today. Nobody was more excited to get back here than us after all the days of snow we saw and all the long flights and things like that. We’re excited to play here.”
Asked if the warm weather could be felt indoors with the energy of #Roaracle, Lee replied, “I’m sure it will be. It never fails.”
PRACTICE IN BETWEEN GAMES
After the Dubs celebrated Draymond Green‘s birthday by hammering the Bucks, the Warriors were back at their practice facility yesterday morning, practicing for tonight’s matchup against the Mavs.
Kerr took a little later-self-described “tongue in cheek” jab at Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, who has been openly campaigning for James Harden winning the MVP award.
“If Daryl Morey wants to run his own one-man campaign for James Harden, he can do that. That’s fine, but we’re focused on other stuff,” Kerr said. Monte Poole of CSN Bay Area, Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group each wrote a story on it.
Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com also found a response from Morey:
Morey responded later Thursday on “The Dan Le Batard Show” on ESPN Radio when told of Kerr’s comments.
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“I would say that myself and James are only focused on winning the championship, so I think that’s a bit of a straw-man argument he set up,” Morey said.
Thanks to a tip by Leung, we sent the video in to ESPN. Someone let us know if they aired it.
I caught Stephen Curry practicing a new kind of jumper — one with his feet crossed!
I hope to follow up with him on this one in due time.
Meanwhile, some of the bench players went at it in 3-on-3 competition:
At one point, Marreese Speights made a clutch jumper and exclaimed, “Put me in the fuckin game coach!” — a reference to his not playing in the Bucks game. It was half-joking, though.
Andrew Bogut also got interviewed and Poole detailed his reaction to the JaVale McGee rumors, which we reported that general manager Bob Myers was monitoring.
MORNING SHOOTAROUND
At morning shootaround, after celebrating beating Kerr in another free throw contest by exulting, “Control your own destiny!”…
#StephCurry tells, "Control your own destiny!!" as he beats Kerr in another FT contest. pic.twitter.com/SyWW2cmpdc
— Let’s Go Warriors 💦💛💙 (@LetsGoWarriors) March 6, 2015
…Curry talked about how he wanted to win the MVP award. Poole filed a report on it.
We were also privy to a little 2-on-1 battle between two Warriors trainers and Andre Iguodala, which Iguodala ended with an emphatic slam dunk:
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