Golden State Warriors guard Monta Ellis took some time to speak with the media at practice Tuesday at W’s headquarters in downtown Oakland, discussing the team’s embarrassing loss to the Memphis Grizzlies Monday night at Oralce Arena:
Monta began talking about the game as a whole:
"Being up twenty, then losing on your home court, then losing the game in the fourth quarter— it hurt, it’s embarrassing….Gotta move ahead. Came here to watch film today, looked at all the mistakes that we made, try to correct them. Got another game tomorrow, we’ll see what we can do to try and turn this thing around."
Monta was then asked what he feels the team could have done at the end of the game Monday to change the outcome:
"It’s everything. Turning the ball over, defending better on the other end…getting the 50-50 balls, pretty much everything about that little stretch that we had."
The question was also proposed that the W’s may need some more talent to start winning more ballgames. Monta didn’t feel that way at all:
"No, we don’t need any help. We just need to value the ball down the stretch, execute our offense, get more 50-50 balls, we just got to take out time. That’s it, we dont need any players…Out of the 11 games we lost, we was winning nine of them in the fourth quarter."
Monta seemed very tired of answering negative questions, so I decided to ask him what he felt the team has been doing right to give them a chance to win these tight ballgames:
"We’ve been playing Warriors basketball for three quarters, and somehow we always lose it in the fourth. If we can match our fourth quarter with the first three, then we’d be good."
Let’s see how the W’s respond during their Wednesday matchup against the Blazers.
For more on the W’s, head over to Golden State of Mind.