LOS ANGELES –- Draymond Green was ticked off. He was seething, angry with himself, with the Warriors' performance and with their lack of malice.
In the wake of the Warriors being pushed out of Staples Center by a 100-86 loss to the Clippers Thursday night, Green was seeing red.
"We couldn't hit a shot -– and that game was too nice,'' he began.
[POOLE: Instant Replay: W's outmuscled down stretch in loss to Clips]
"It wasn't the game that I expected to play in. It was too nice on both teams' behalf, honestly. It was not the same that we've come to know with those guys."
The Warriors took a quick 10-point lead while the Clippers struggled to make a shot. At one point in the first quarter, they missed 17 consecutive shots. But the Warriors failed to capitalize. Their 10-point first quarter lead grew to 11 in the second quarter, only to shrink to one (42-41) at the half.
And the Clippers, so awful in the early going, came back in the second half with a vengeance.
"We didn't think we made shots either," Green said of the first half. "We thought at some point it would change for us. And it changed for them. It didn't change for us.
"But once again, that game was too nice. It was boring to play in. It was no fun. It was boring. It was a `nice' game."
Warriors-Clippers games in recent years typically are emotional affairs, filled with pushing and shoving and no shortage of trash talk. This game was relatively tame.
And Green, his team's resident firebrand, didn't like that at all.
"I didn't think we were intense, as far as that fire," he said. "But I don't think they were, either. I don't know what the cause of it was. Maybe everybody was a little too jolly. But it was too nice. It was boring. I'm sure that wasn't the prime-time game everybody expected.
"I'm not saying you have to have all the elbows and all that crazy stuff. You don't have to have all of that. But the battle? It just wasn't there."
“It’s no secret we don’t like them. And it’s no secret they don’t like us. I don’t know why the game was that nice, trying to act like we like each other. And we don’t."
