Draymond Green defensive about Warriors defense
OAKLAND – In some ways, this looks like a different version of the same old Golden State Warriors story.
They’re all the rage again in the regular season – 12 wins in a row and a 16-2 overall mark for the team that won an unprecedented 73 games last season before faltering in the Finals. They’re being fueled by disrespect again, taking note of the headlines about their diminished defense and promising to punish anyone who dares doubt them.
It’s enough to make you wonder if they’re already forgetting about the cautionary tale they authored last June, the one that ultimately led to them landing Kevin Durant in the summer as the ultimate free agency counter: drive too hard in the games that don’t matter most, and you just might run out of gas come playoff time.
And then, in an Oracle Arena hallway after their latest win on Monday night, Draymond Green helps you understand how this is so much different.
“If we want to be good, this is what we have to do, and we know this,” Green told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s not like it’s a secret, like ‘Oh, we’re trying to become a good team.’ We’ve been to the mountaintop. We’ve fallen when we were at the top, so we know what it takes to get there. It’s just a matter of actually going out there and doing it.
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“Do I think we can outscore anybody in this league? One hundred percent. Is that going to win us a championship? Hell no. And so, you have to build those habits now. You can’t start in May, start in April. If you don’t build those habits now you’re going to get cracked the first round, no matter how much you score.”
When Green announced in his Monday night postgame press conference that he was “pissed” about the way the Warriors’ defense has been perceived, taking specific exception to the idea that the loss of big man Andrew Bogut during the offseason meant their days as an elite defensive team were over, it was about the big picture and the greater good more than anything.
The Warriors were never going to win a title playing the kind of defense they had early on (22nd in defensive rating after five games), even with the way unfair way they’re able to score (not since the 1991-92 Warriors has a team scored at this rate). So defensive adjustments were made, locker room conversations were had, roles were reestablished, and now they fancy themselves a two-way team again (eighth in defensive rating overall, fifth during the winning streak).
It’s a virtuous endeavor and nothing like what was happening here a year ago.
At its core, the Warriors’ six-month push to 73 was about greed and pride as much as anything else. They had privately fumed at the chatter about their 2015 championship, all those people saying how the Cavs’ injuries at the end had paved the way for a gift-wrapped trophy. So they unleashed a special brand of hoops hell on the rest of the league, starting 24-0 and keeping the throttle down from there.
It was all completely understandable, if only because the notion of making regular season history while having enough left in the tank to defend their title seemed entirely possible. But it backfired in the end, and the psyche of those who remain was forever changed as a result. This, quite clearly, is not that. And this, nearly five months after Durant decided to leave Oklahoma City and with Green looking to wrestle that Defensive Player of the Year award from San Antonio’s Kawhi Leonard, is looking more dangerous by the day.
“I’d be the first to tell you that we were going to miss Bogut on defense,” Green said of the big man who was traded to the Dallas Mavericks in order to create the salary cap room to sign Durant. “There was no secret about it. But I didn’t think we (wouldn’t) adjust to it. I thought that we could adjust to it, and we have.
“I think (the criticism of their defense) became disrespectful once everybody said, ‘Oh, their defense is going to suck. I think that’s a bit disrespectful. Like, give us a chance, you know, to make this work. And so that’s when it became disrespectful to me.”
So Durant and Green have taken their defense to a whole new level, doing the heavy lifting at the rim (combined 3.4 blocks per game). They’re ahead of last season’s pace on that front (6.6 per game as a team, second in the NBA and ahead of the 6.1 mark from 2015-16 when they had the fourth-highest rated defense). Their defensive mastermind, assistant coach Ron Adams, kept tinkering, and talking, with head coach Steve Kerr.
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“I think (Bogut) is the best defensive center in the league,” Green said. “To take that away, you’re going to have to adjust. It’s like if you removed Steph (Curry) off this team, or if you removed KD (Durant) off this team, you remove Klay (Thompson) off this team. You’ve got to adjust to anything like that. That is a big deal.”
Less so all the time, it seems.
“I think we’ve started to swarm (offense) more,” Green said. “We’re more aggressive on the defensive end … Maybe sometimes you would sit back and funnel (dribblers) to Bogut, (but) you ain’t funneling no more. Now you’re aggressive. You’re trying to make teams do what you want them to do as opposed to them kind of dictating what’s going to go on with them. You make them do what you want them to do.”
From now, they hope, until the parade.