Draymond Green knows the 2025-26 season has been a brutal one for the Golden State Warriors. As the team heads into April for the final stretch of the regular season, Golden State sits entrenched in the Western Conference play-in picture at the 10th spot. With no realistic path to climbing into the top six and avoiding the play-in tournament, the Warriors are fighting just to stay alive in the postseason hunt.
Injuries have decimated the roster all year. Stephen Curry has missed the past 25-plus games with a persistent knee issue, while Jimmy Butler suffered a season-ending ACL tear in January. Moses Moody is also sidelined with a knee injury. As the Warriors weigh whether to bring Curry back for a few tune-up games before the play-in — with head coach Steve Kerr expressing a desire to get the star some reps — Green has stepped up as the vocal leader of a young, makeshift lineup.
Green has been the steady veteran presence in a starting group that features just one other experienced player in Kristaps Porzingis. The rest of the unit relies heavily on youth: 23-year-olds Gui Santos, Brandin Podziemski, and Will Richard. The Warriors have trotted out a staggering 37 different starting lineups this season, and they went 13-22 without Curry heading into recent games.
“We definitely hope to have Steph back,” Green said in a one-on-one interview. “There’s no guarantee that he’s going to be back, but you know that would be the hope. But I think ultimately, just whoever you have on the floor, you have to continue to try to build great habits.”
Green warned against falling into a “snake-bit mentality” — the dangerous mindset of blaming bad luck, injuries, or external factors and slipping into negativity.
“If you have to think negatively about things, that’s the end, it doesn’t work past that,” he continued. “I think for us, it’s just about staying the course, understanding that listen, throughout the course of the NBA season, lots of sunny days, there’s a lot of rainy days, and you got to process the rainy days.”
The veteran forward emphasized that the Warriors cannot simply wait for reinforcements and flip a switch once healthier. Building strong habits now is essential, because bad ones form quickly and are far harder to break.
“When you are in a better position from a health standpoint, we’re able to play that brand of basketball and not just think, ‘Oh, man, you can go out, you can put a crappy product out there on the floor,’” Green explained. “You can go into these games with terrible focus. And then you get everybody back, and all of a sudden you think, ‘Oh, now we could just flip the switch.’ It doesn’t work like that because you build bad habits. It’s just as quick as you can build a bad habit. It takes double, triple the time to break it.”
Leading into their matchup against the Denver Nuggets, the Warriors had won three straight games as they pushed for their fourth playoff appearance (via play-in) in the past five seasons. Green preaches relentless focus on the process, regardless of Curry’s potential return.
Curry has been dominant when healthy, averaging a team-high 27.2 points per game on 46.8% shooting from the field and 39.1% from three-point range.
Draymond Green On Why He Uses NBA Threads and How It Helps Him Engage With Fans
Off the court, the outspoken four-time champion remains one of the NBA’s most vocal figures — both on basketball matters and broader issues. One platform where Green has been especially active is NBA Threads, a fast-paced community dedicated to basketball conversation.
Green highlighted his favorite feature: the AIgo (Dear AIgo) tool, an AI-powered system that tailors content even more precisely to users’ interests.
“I think NBA Threads is just a conversation around the NBA,” Green said. “It’s kind of the community of all Threads and it’s everything NBA, all discourse around the game. And interestingly enough… Dear AIgo – the AI-powered feature – has been very interesting for me.”
He explained that Threads already felt more tailored to his preferences than other platforms, and Dear AIgo takes it further by consolidating conversations directly around the topics he wants to engage with — especially basketball.
Green, who has used the platform for at least a year, primarily turns to it to interact with fans and gather information.
“I interact with fans, that’s what I usually use it most for,” he said. “Use it mostly to interact with fans, but it’s also just a great source of information. Like I found out things about our team on Threads, which is very interesting in itself.”
He noted that several NBA personnel and retired players are active there, singling out ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins as someone who’s “on there every single day” and generates plenty of discourse.
One major advantage Green sees in NBA Threads is the ability to curate a more positive, focused experience and tune out negativity — something that’s much harder on platforms like X.
“You think about our lives on social media, and it’s a lot of crap that you run into. Everyone has an opinion… with that, there’s the chance you see a lot of stuff that you don’t want to see, which I think ultimately it’s what drives players away from social media,” Green said.
He acknowledged that even the toughest athletes can be affected by constant negative opinions and noise, which is why some players go “dark” on social media during critical times like the playoffs.
“The reality is for the toughest person, it has an effect,” he added. Dear AIgo helps by delivering concentrated, relevant content that aligns with what players want to see and study, allowing them to stay engaged productively without derailing their focus or routine.
Green’s message is clear: whether on the court or online, it’s about staying the course, building good habits, processing the rainy days, and keeping the right mindset. For these shorthanded Warriors, that “belt-to-ass” mentality of grinding through adversity without excuses may be exactly what’s needed to make a late push into the play-in and beyond.