Four-time champion explains why constant changes are necessary.
The Golden State Warriors are stuck at 13-14 through 27 games this season, and Draymond Green isn't holding back on the reasons why head coach Steve Kerr keeps shuffling the lineup.
After Sunday's 136-131 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, where Stephen Curry exploded for 48 points but still couldn't lead his team to victory, Green spoke candidly about the Warriors' search for answers.
His message was that the Warriors can't expect to build continuity when they're not winning games.
"You can't find continuity until you find stuff that works," Green told reporters, according to The Athletic. "And then it leads to wins, and right now we haven't done that, so there's no chance of finding continuity. You're not just gonna start the same lineup to keep it familiar. If you ain't f–ing winning, you ain't winning. You got to change something. So until we figure it out, he's going to be changing s— because we got to figure it out."
Searching for the Right Combination
The Warriors have already used 15 different starting lineups through their first 27 games and they've changed their starting five in each of the last nine contests.
That pace would project to about 45 different starting lineups by season's end, exceeding the 38 unique starting lineups they used during the entire 2024-25 season when they finished 48-34.
Kerr has been mixing and matching combinations with Jimmy Butler III, Moses Moody, and others alongside Curry and Green.
The constant changes aren't by design, but they're necessary according to Green because the Warriors haven't found a group that consistently wins games together, and injuries have also prevented any rhythm from developing.
Defending the Coach
Green also pushed back against critics who have blamed Kerr for the constant lineup changes and said some people want to point fingers at the coach, but when a team is barely above .500, standing pat with the same approach doesn't make sense.
Green explained that Kerr should keep experimenting until the Warriors find combinations that actually work because continuing to roll out lineups that aren't winning would be a bigger mistake than searching for answers.
The Warriors' next game comes Thursday when they travel to Phoenix to face the Suns, and with how things have gone this season, there's a good chance fans will see yet another new starting lineup.
For Green and his teammates, that's just the reality of their situation right now, and they'll keep trying different combinations until something clicks and they start winning games consistently.