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Draymond: 'Defense isn't really an emphasis anymore in this league'

Gene Sweeney Jr. / Getty Images Sport / Getty

Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green has an idea about why scores around the NBA have been so high to start the 2018-19 regular season: The referees are quick to blow their whistles at the slightest indication of a foul.

"It's been called pretty tight," Green surmised after Sunday's loss to the Denver Nuggets, according to ESPN's Nick Friedell. "We were told that. Defense isn't really an emphasis anymore in this league. So I think you're seeing it all around the league with these high scores. We know what the emphasis is. Just got to be better and we haven't done that in three games. Maybe we win two of them, but it caught us tonight."

For his part, Green, the 2016-17 Defensive Player of the Year, has been whistled for fouls at a career-high rate through three games - up to 4.3 per contest from a career average of 2.8. In each of Green's past two outings, he's gone to the brink of ejection by accruing five personal fouls. The 28-year-old totaled five personal fouls in just eight of his 70 regular-season appearances last season.

While Green said some of the calls against the Warriors this season have been questionable, he also admitted the team is culpable for some decisions on defense that "are just dumb as hell."

"We got to be smarter," Green conceded. "We can't sit there and act like every foul call on us is wrong throughout the course of the game. The officials are going to get some wrong, that's just the nature of the beast, they're human, that's the game we play. To clean that up, to combat that, we can't have the stupid ones because what they do is an inexact science. So they're not going to get them all right, how do you combat that? Clean up our defense, stop using our hands as much, stop reaching. And right now we're not doing a good job of that."

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