In the NBA, tanking has become a commonplace strategy for struggling teams that are aiming for favorable draft positions. This season, teams such as the Utah Jazz have been criticized for employing such a strategy. 

The Golden State Warriors, however, are not in the bubble of teams that have phoned in the 2025-26 season in hopes of benefiting from the NBA Draft Lottery on May 10. However, that has not stopped longtime Golden State forward Draymond Green from holding his young teammates accountable. 

In a Q&A with Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson, Green became candid about his expectations for the standard he wants his teammates to meet. 

“Just a standard of winning,” Green said. “If you practice bad habits, you become a bad player and you become a product of those bad habits. For us, it is all about practicing and maintaining good habits. Every time you step on the court, you are developing winning habits. Those habits do not come overnight.” 

As of March 4, the Warriors are 31-30 and maintain the eighth seed in the Western Conference. The team is not the same as it was during its dynastic run that resulted in four titles over a seven-year span. Green was a part of each of those teams, and he is continuing to instill good habits in the next generation of players he shares the court with. 

“If you do not start developing them, you start developing bad habits and then how do you ever overcome them? I am just always teaching consistency in the work that you are putting out there on the court,” Green said. 

While Steph Curry and Klay Thompson were stealing the hearts of opponents from the perimeter as the “Splash Brothers,” Green was carving out his own identity as an elite defender and an enforcer. During his career, Green’s temper and physicality on the court have shrouded him in controversy and gotten him in trouble more than once, with perhaps the most consequential incident being his Game 5 suspension in the 2016 NBA Finals. 

Green landed the suspension because of a swipe he took at LeBron James’ groin during Game 4 of the series. The Cavaliers were down 3-1 when they beat the Warriors on the road without Green in Game 5, and it served as an inflection point for Cleveland’s comeback to win the championship. 

Though his Warriors teams have never purposely tanked, Green knows what it is like to lose. After Golden State’s loss to the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 Finals in which Thompson tore his ACL, Kevin Durant departed for the Brooklyn Nets, and Curry ended up breaking his hand, a depleted core resulted in a nightmarish 15-50 season for Golden State, and Green played in 43 of the games.  

However, by 2022, the Warriors were NBA champions once again. 

While Green has been polarizing, he is well equipped and decorated enough to know what it takes to win. It is hard to imagine that if he and Curry are playing, the Warriors will actively engage in a losing season.