Draymond is the one who makes that difference

By Art Spander

The best defensive player in the world. Steve Kerr said that about Draymond Green. Of course it’s an exaggeration, but this is an era of exaggeration, and if anybody is going tell us that it would be Kerr, who is Green’s coach with the Warriors.

And if anybody deserves that compliment, that exaggeration, it’s Green.

“There’s no sport where one player makes that much of a difference.” So said Chris Mullin, the Hall of Famer who once made a difference for the Warriors in the 1980s and now does their pre- and post-game TV.

That comment is not an exaggeration. It’s the truth.

In football, a player is 1/11th of the lineup; well, 1/22nd, considering offense and defense are separate units; in baseball, one-ninth; in basketball, one-fifth. But numbers alone are inadequate.

Even those of the win streak that the Warriors carry into Wednesday night against the Clippers at Chase Center. Two games.

A trifle compared to the 24 in a row that opened the 2015-16 season. Yet after an 0-2 start to the schedule, a bit of reassurance.

The Warriors have spent time practicing. James Wiseman, the No. 2 overall pick in the November NBA draft, has spent time improving. Steph Curry has spent time making most of his shots. Green has spent time reminding everyone how much he was missed when absent because of a sore foot.

“He’s kind of our point forward in many ways,” said Kerr, “and the leader of the team.”

That last part is no exaggeration.

Curry is the headliner, the one who gets the points — 62 two games ago — and, with two MVP awards, the most attention. Think of the Dubs, and you cannot think of anyone but Steph. 

Wiseman is the comer, and his progress, with only three college games and then months of relative inactivity, has been tantalizing. When this kid learns the game, others will learn what he’s about to become: one of the greats.

Andrew Wiggins is the mystery, the first man taken in the 2014 draft but who has been twice traded and frequently criticized for being more unpredictable than reliable. Ah, but maybe this is his spot and his year.

Damion Lee, Eric Paschal, Kelly Oubre, Kent Bazemore and Kevon Looney are among the pieces on the roster.

Green is the feisty, experienced and wise guy who has to make certain those many pieces fit properly.

“He impacts the game so dramatically on defense,” Kerr said of Green’s play after the Warriors defeated the Sacramento Kings, 137-106, Monday night. “And then on offense he gets us organized.” 

In those recent glory days when Kevin Durant was around, and Klay Thompson was healthy and Andre Iguodala was anywhere he needed to be, Draymond got what was coming to him — NBA Defensive Player of the Year in ’17 — and made sure teammates got the ball.

There were incidents, the scuffle with LeBron James, then of Cleveland, and suspension in the 2016 finals; the argument with teammate Durant in November 2018. Nothing that would keep Draymond from his role.

Those days, five straight finals, three titles, are gone. So, through injuries (Thompson) or personnel movement, are most of the men from those teams, other than Green, who will be 31 in March, and Curry, who will be 33 also in March.

A feeling of familiarity. A need for adaptation.

“They know each other so well,” Kerr said of Green and Curry. “So their pick-and-roll game is beautiful to watch with their hand-backs. And Draymond understands how to get (Curry) open. Our defense gets a lot better with Draymond on the floor. Steph gets more transition opportunities as well.”

Then there are the other Warriors who leave Green uncertain.

“There are times out there,” Green confessed, “where I’m out there on the floor and I don’t know where to go because we’re all figuring each other out. So it’s important we get that movement, and even as important that I’m directing that movement and helping guys get that understanding.”

The best defensive player in the world seems as capable with the ball as without it.

Then Draymond came back in

SAN FRANCISCO — Then Draymond came back in. Alec Burks said it. An All-Star is supposed to make a difference, right? And Draymond Green, All-Star, emotional leader, has made a difference, in games that have become so much a part of the Warriors’ legacy.

Or, as on Monday night, in a game less consequential, other than it was responsible for the first two-game win streak of a season now finding itself.

Yes, two in a row, which compared to those glory days a few seasons past, the 24 straight victories early in the 2015 season, seems almost unworthy of being mentioned.

But that was then, and this is now, the tumult and frustration without the departed (and hurt) Kevin Durant and the still present but equally injured Klay Thompson and Steph Curry.

No Kevin, no Steph, no play. But plenty of Draymond. And with the 113-104 triumph over the Minnesota Timberwolves, a second win in a row.

Which most likely is as far as it goes, since next under the tree is the Houston Rockets on Christmas Day.

“We need this regardless of what is coming next,” said Steve Kerr, the Warriors’ coach. “We just needed to win a couple games in a row to get a little momentum and feel good.”

It was the mediocre Timberwolves, having cut a 24-point third-quarter deficit to six points with six minutes to go in the fourth quarter, who had the “mo.”

“Then,” said Burks, “Draymond came back in and got D-Lo (D’Angelo Russell) a shot. We were just playing out of character, and they went on a couple of runs, which allowed them to come back.”

But only so far.

Burks, a guy who’s been tossed around the league — the Warriors are his fourth teams in eight seasons — has been making his points, literally (25 Monday night) and symbolically (his observations). He talks quickly and softly, but his words, like his shots, hit the mark.

“I think my teammates are putting me in the right position,” he said about his ability to score, “and Steve (Kerr) is trusting me to have the ball in my hand and make plays for myself and others.”

One of those others is Russell, who had 30 points. People knew D-Lo could score and, finally healthy, he is proving people correct. The question now is how D-Lo and Curry, who is supposed to be back in late February, will pair together. Maybe not the Splash Brothers redux, but perhaps there will be a lot of water flying and baskets dropping.  

Curry, his left hand in that cast, and Thompson, recovering from the torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left leg, both were at Chase Center with their teammates Monday night, although unable to play.

“Just having their presence, especially for the young guys,” Green said of the contributions from Curry and Thompson at games or practice.

“Those (young) guys haven’t been around as much. I’ve always said when you’re hurt, you’re just not a part of the team. These young guys look up to them. They are legends, superstars, heroes to some of these young guys.”

So too is Green. At the moment, Andre Iguodala, Shawn Livingston and Durant gone, Curry and Thompson rehabbing, Draymond is the only player on the Warriors still active from the teams in five straight NBA finals.

He hectors teammates, yells at officials and keeps believing.

“I think our younger guys are getting some experience,” Green said about the improved defense. “Starting to figure out rotations, and that makes a difference.”

Green was enthusiastic about the inside play of center Willie Cauley-Stein, who had three blocked shots Monday night. “He made several plays tonight at the rim,” Green said of Cauley-Stein, “giving us the spark (on defense) he also gives us on offense. The way he runs the runs the floor, like the play he got the block and then sprinted out and got the dunk.”

So Draymond, how does it feel to win two in a row? “It feels bleeping amazing,” he all but shouted. “I never thought I’d be so excited for two regular season wins in my life.”

Green takes the floor on Warriors media day

By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

SAN FRANCISCO — He’s not afraid to defend LeBron. He’s not afraid to take a shot when the clock is running down. So why should Draymond Green be afraid to speak from the heart, a characteristic that doesn’t make him much different than others in his sport?

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2019, The Maven 

For Draymond, a return to the game he loves

By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

OAKLAND, Calif. — This was the way Draymond Green likes it, and not only because the Warriors won, although that might have entered into the equation.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2019, The Maven 

Of moonshots, awards, Draymond and a Warriors win

By Art Spander

OAKLAND, Calif. — Steph doesn’t believe America ever made it to the moon. Yes, Mr. Curry, who launches his own figurative moonshots, said he doubts the United States reached the lunar surface.

Just like the movie, “Capricorn One,” starring, back in the days before he went on trial and to prison, O.J. Simpson.

The film was built on skepticism, that what we saw on TV one July day in 1969, Neil Armstrong strolling on the moon, was in fact a video fraud, created on a sound stage in Hollywood.

That was long before Steph was born, but on a podcast with some other NBA types the other day, Curry just happened to ask, “We ever been to the moon?” Others on the panel, including technologically minded Andre Iguodala, answered in unison, “No.”

The guess is they were joking. But there’s no joking about Curry’s game. On Monday night, with the Warriors back to the Oracle after a five-game road trip, and with Draymond Green back in the lineup, Curry was back to, well, being Curry.

He started slowly, missing six of his first nine shots, but by the end he had 38 points, and the Warriors, whole again and roiling again, had a 116-108 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, their fourth in a row.

“He’s good at basketball,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr wonderfully understated when asked to describe Curry. “I get asked that every day, and I don’t know how to answer it anymore. Nothing he does surprises me. I guess I can say that. Even on a night he gets off to a slow start, he always finds a way.”

These are heady times for a notable team, a team — as Curry said, “is as close to full strength as we’ve been all year” — that has been chosen as Sports Illustrated’s “Sports Person of the Year,” even though it is not one person but many.

In the 65 occasions since the award was given, beginning with Roger Bannister in 1954, a team has been chosen four times — the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey champs; the 1999 U.S. women’s World Cup champs; the 2004 Boston Red Sox World Series winners; and now the Dubs.

“For all the individual brilliance of Steph Curry — a selection whom few would have protested — the Warriors have always been most delightfully viewed through a collective prism,” said Sports Illustrated.

“There have been superteams that have forced us to reimagine how the game is played, but none perhaps in a generation, maybe two, are so beautifully choreographed as the Warriors. At the Dubs’ most golden, their movements and pieces seamlessly blur into each other to the point where it impossible to distinguish the magic of one player from another, even magic so singular as that of Curry or KD.” 

In the blur Monday night, KD, Kevin Durant, had 22 points and Klay Thompson had 26. And Draymond Green, out the previous 11 games because of a right toe sprain, had 10 rebounds, 7 assists and 7 points.

The Warriors agreed that Green’s return brought revitalization. So did Minnesota coach Tom Thibodeau, who insisted, “I’ve always said this about Draymond: he’s probably the most unique player in the league in terms of what he means to this team.”

What the team, the game of basketball, means to Draymond is clear.

“I miss the trash talking,” said Green, “the getting on the court. I felt like a kid in a candy store. That’s what we all miss when we leave the game, yelling at the guys, the refs.”

Asked his favorite play of the night, Green said it was just before the half. He took a pass, “but I was gassed. Not interested in going for a layup. I saw Klay was open. So I took the road less traveled. One more dribble probably would have taken me out.”

Durant said what he noticed with Draymond again in the lineup was not any disagreement such as the one when Green yelled at Durant to pass and Durant did not, but Draymond pushing the ball up and talking defense.

Four All-Stars once more together, one common goal.

“I think we play with a faster pace,” Kerr said, talking about how Draymond improves the Warriors. “That’s the main thing. He gives us a different dimension. I think we’re going to get much better. It was a good first step.”

You might say a small step for man, but not if you didn’t think we ever got to the moon. Come on, Steph.