SAN FRANCISCO — Draymond Green went directly to the camera and put his face mere inches from the lens. He wanted to tell the world that he was still its best defender.
As if there was any question of that after he played picture-perfect defense on Houston center Alperen Şengün’s last-second isolation shot to seal a Warriors win and a 3-1 first-round series lead.
Green might not be the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year (he won something called the Hustle Player of the Year instead), but he’s still the finest defender of this generation. There are four rings on his fingers to prove it.
And after Monday’s win, it’s not nearly as far-fetched as it once was to think he could add one for the thumb this June.
Yet there were the Rockets, trying him in the biggest moment of this slugfest of a playoff series.
Down one with 13.1 seconds to play, they had the time to draw up any play in the book.
Instead, they decided to go directly at Green.
“Why him?” Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski said after the game.
Because they wanted to lose, I suppose.
It worked out as you’d imagine; as it has for countless teams before these Rockets.
“He’s the best defender I’ve ever seen in my life. He rises to the occasion,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “On top of being a great defender, he’s an incredible competitor. We’ve seen it. I’ve seen it for 11 years. Game on the line, Draymond making a stop. It’s like having Steph Curry take the shot.”
At 35 years old, this wasn’t a banner season for Green. His offense sputtered, and his DPOY candidacy was just a late push after the Jimmy Butler trade and a hope that his reputation and underfilled cabinet of personal accolades would allow him to win an award with no clear front-runner. He ultimately finished third in award voting.
Everyone knows there will be a day when Green does not have it anymore; a day when he’s a step too slow and his super genius basketball brain can’t make up for it.
And you can almost forgive the Rockets for thinking Monday was that day, given Green’s woeful first 25 minutes of play on Monday.
But the final five minutes told a different story.
That was winning time. And if Green is anything, he’s a winner.
It was beyond brash that the Rockets attacked him, of all people, on that final play. Even as the set developed, you could sense in the arena that Houston knew it had made a mistake. This was not Trayce Jackson-Davis or Gary Payton II, whom Şengün had been cooking while Green sat on the bench with foul trouble.
No, it was the man who is still undefeated in battles of brashness.
And because Green won again, the Warriors are one win away — with three games to get it — from eliminating the Rockets for a fifth time in five tries since 2015.
Monday’s game was the duality of Green in a nutshell. Had the Dubs lost Game 4, he would have been the reason, and not just because of a different outcome on the final play.
But he’s also the reason the Dubs’ won.
You have to take the bad with the good with Green. Somehow, the good almost always comes out on top.
Amazingly, that was the case on Monday. Green is the Warriors’ tone-setter, but he was downright unraveling in Game 4. Rockets pest Dillion Brooks had the Dubs enforcer where he wanted him emotionally — fighting proxy battles and failing to lock in on the court. The Warriors didn’t have much focus as a team because Green’s was all over the place.
And if Monday’s game was just a regular-season matchup, Green would have already taken a shower and drank a glass of wine by the start of the second half. He picked up a deserved technical foul in a skirmish with Brooks with seven minutes to play in the second quarter, only to commit a flagrant foul a little more than four minutes later, when Tari Easton stripped him of the ball, and Green retaliated by tackling him.
While two technicals or two flagrant fouls will eject you from a game, a combination of one each keeps you in it. Who knew?
(Well, maybe the refs.)
It left Green eligible to keep playing the game but carrying four personal fouls before halftime. It took him less than four minutes into the second half to pick up his fifth.
He effectively ejected himself.
Pair that with an offensive night where he made the Warriors’ first two shots and didn’t make another basket the rest of the game — an evening where he looked unconfident with the ball in his hands — and perhaps it was a blessing for the Warriors that Green had to sit until the final 7:51 of the fourth quarter, even as Şengün was cooking smaller competition.
What a mess it all was. The series looked destined to go to 2-2 ahead as it shifted to every-other-day action. You would have been justified in picking the Rocket from that point onwards.
But Green did what he so often does during disastrous games — he found a way to make up for his own sins. Upon returning to the contest in the fourth quarter, he immediately made three stops, using textbook technique for each contest.
Then he secured three big-time, grown-man rebounds on three possessions following that.
And when his number, of all numbers, was called for the final defensive play, he stonewalled the Rockets’ one All-Star.
Again, he did all of it while being one foul away from disqualification. Kerr called it “phenomenal.”
“You can’t play the game worrying,” Green said. “I’ll just go sit down if I’m just going to go out there and be cautious.”
“I always walk that line. That’s who I am: Habitual line stepper.”
“Draymond always walks the line. He always teeters on that line. He’s an emotional force, a physical force. He just can’t cross the line. He knows that. He’s just done a great job of playing through the frustration,” Kerr said.
“The last two games, his fourth-quarter defense keyed everything.”
That’s the difference between great playoff performers and the rest. That’s the lesson these young Rockets are yet to learn — a lesson there’s no guarantee they will ever understand.
The NBA Playoffs might as well be a different sport than regular-season basketball. The refs let far more go, including Green’s first-half transgressions.
And the final half of the fourth quarter of a tight playoff game? That’s an entirely different game than that. It’s as much a battle of wills and smarts as strength or skill.
That’s Green’s time to shine. And while it hasn’t always been perfect, his track record—even if it seems like ancient history to some of his own teammates—speaks for itself.
There’s a four-time Defensive Player of the Year whose team takes him off the court for their biggest, crunch-time defensive possessions.
There’s another whose team has already been swept who would have almost certainly fouled out within minutes of re-entering a game like Monday’s.
Meanwhile, Green’s defense likely won the Warriors a playoff series.
Green didn’t deserve the DPOY award this year. That’s ok. He’s playing for a much more important prize this summer.
And the Warriors are one step closer to it after Monday.
Originally Published:
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