Below is a core dump of Draymond Green on the podium campaigning for DPOY or All-Defense — and I want to tip my hat to Danny Emerman of Bay Area News Group for furthering the line of questions along — and Steve Kerr, as well. Draymond’s was from March 18th after the Milwaukee game and Steve was the other night after the Toronto win.
I’d also like to add: amongst all the talk of what Dray does well, let’s not forget his close-outs are insanely elite, whether it’s to defend a corner three or stop short of the scouting report says the shooter is struggling.
Sometimes, it’s a guard or slashing wing out there and that’s maybe my No. 1 low-key exciting thing about the Warriors to watch: how Green closes out and defends an attacker. Draymond uses those long arms to stop point-of-attack like I’ve never seen before.
The coaching staff knows it, as Kerr says below, opposing coaching staffs know it, and Immanuel Quickley even knows it, although there wasn’t a specific close-out situation from the Raptors game. But Dray was guarding Quickley at the top of the arc late and that’s just not normal to see a 4 guarding a 1 in crunch time.
Now, Draymond doesn’t win every battle. If you’ve ever dedicated yourself to defense at any level of basketball — like the one time I was a junior in high school and happened to be on the same concrete playground at Central Park in Santa Clara. Jeremy Everett was the local star at and I happened to check him up in a pickup game. I was a defensive specialist back then and I took a charge on Everett — on the concrete! Cool thing about it was, he helped me up and told me that was good defense. Was he still the best player not only on that playground that night? Yes. Was he still all-city and scored a bunch of points for Santa Clara High? Yes.
So if you know basketball defense, then you know Draymond is the best defender of all-time because he can guard 1 through 5 and not win every battle. It’s the fact that he can win any battle and it can happen in crunch time to save a game. If you’ve ever dedicated yourself in a moment to stop a guy on a basketball court, you know that Draymond stop many different types of guys — from posting up to closing out to tapping the ball away from a dribble attacker — and that, to me, is 🤯
00:00 With Gary out, do you expect it to be just be a one game thing?
00:06 STEVE KERR, PREGAME TOR-GSW: Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. It doesn’t appear to be too bad with Steph back tonight.
00:14 You talked about giving him a rest. I was wondering, as a coach, how do you manage trying to get him enough rest and not wearing him down towards the end of the season, but also with this playoff push, how do you balance that?
00:25 It’s gotten really difficult to do that because of the rules that are in place with the league. It’s not as simple as, “Hey, that guy’s exhausted, he needs a night off.” So there’s a whole protocol to it these days. So you just, you do what you can to protect the player, protect the team and you do it within the protocol that the league has set up.
00:58 Coach, you remember playing the Raptors obviously back in January, very competitive game, of course. Obviously, big moves from both teams since the trade deadline. What are your expectations playing them now?
01:09 We gotta play better. I know that was a tough night for us. They played really well down the stretch and knocked us off. We know they’re coming in here, playing at a high level defensively — I think seventh-ranked defense in the league over the last 10 games or so — really forcing turnovers, putting a lot of pressure on the ball, so we can’t take them lightly. I know that we’ve gotta be ready to play and I think it’ll be a good game for us because the turnovers have crept back into our game after a few weeks of really getting that under control and tonight is a game where if we’re loose with the ball, they will pounce on us.
01:53 Obviously, as I just mentioned, big moves, jimmy Butler was one of them. You guys are 15-2, I believe, with him in the lineup. How has he been able to acclimate so fast and you guys see success so quickly with him, here with such a big piece
02:08 IQ, basketball IQ, toughness, competitiveness. those are the marks of great players and when you happen to have that package in a body like his, with that kind of strength, it all makes sense. The game makes sense to Jimmy and when he’s on the floor. That translates to other guys, so it’s been fun to watch.
02:32 I know Gary’s out tonight and obviously always fluid, but relative health at this juncture this season, how significant is that as you guys prep for a push towards the postseason?
02:41 Yeah, it’s a big deal. Obviously, every team is dependent on health and there’s a lot of luck involved in this, every year, so you try to manage things as best you can and hope that, in a case like this, with Gary, it’s just a one-night thing and then he is ready to go, but you never know, so you just, you gotta manage the guys as best you can.
03:04 12, 13 games left, now. Is that a enough of a sample size to get a feel for what you know with relative health, to get a feel for combinations and lineups that you might want to use beyond that?
03:13 Yeah, but we also can’t mess around and experiment, so we’re gonna play the lineups that we think are gonna give us the best chance to win, but within that, we’re getting a lot of information and so it’s a fun time for us to be back in the mix, to be playing well, to have Jimmy anchoring so much of what we do. There’s, I think, room for improvement and it’s never easy to incorporate a guy midseason, especially a guy who’s gonna be such a focal point, but Jimmy has made that easier because of his IQ and his ability to make everybody better.
04:01 Coach, I’m sure you’re happy to have Steph back in the lineup tonight, but how nice was it to see the way the team played without him and, what can that do for the team’s confidence?
04:09 It’s a great night for us, just the perseverance, the ability to bounce back after, off of a really poor performance. That’s the mark of a good team and, in particular, when your best player’s out. It was good night for us, but now we’ve gotta follow through. We — as I said, there’s no messing around. We’ve got 13 left. We’re right there in terms of climbing the ladder and getting a good playoff seeding or going the other direction and ending up in the Play-in, so no room for air.
04:43 Coach, piggybacking off the combinations, so you guys are as close to whole as you — I know Gary’s out tonight — but as close to whole as you’ve been the entire season when you’re trying to determine down the stretch of a game, you know who you’re gonna close or finish with, assuming that three of those spots are occupied by Steph, Jimmy, and Draymond. What factors into that decision for you?
05:02 Who’s playing well that night and matchups? The other night, Gary was the obvious guy to close the game because they had Damian Lillard out there and Gary’s our best perimeter defender and we had the lead. If we were down, maybe I would’ve gone with Moses or Buddy for the shooting, but usually the game tells you who you need to play and you go from there. But matchups definitely play a factor.
05:31 How did Brandin recover from coming back from injury like he did after the first game, and what’d you think about his activity last game?
05:38 Brandin was great. He looked strong, active, very confident and I’m excited to get him back. He’s one of the guys who connects the game for us and makes it make sense and we’re gonna need him tonight against this defense and some of the switching that they’ll do. BP is, one of the guys who can create a lot of offense with his brain and his activity and so I’m thrilled to have him back.
06:11 Steve, I was wondering if I could follow up on your comment from the other night that Draymond is the best defender you’ve ever seen, because you have seen and played with a lot of great defenders.
06:20 Yeah.
06:20 Do you have a Top Three maybe, or what differentiates Draymond specifically?
06:24 I have a top two, and that’s Scottie Pippen and Draymond and I think what makes Draymond different from Scottie is that Draymond is physically stronger and more capable of guarding low-post players. And I’ll give Scottie a break because back then, the low post guys were Shaq and Patrick Ewing and Hakeem and it was a very different game, back then where it was very low-post-centric and now hardly anybody goes down to the block. But what I see with Draymond when he’s guarding the post, it’s incredible when you then add on top of that, his ability to guard pick-and-roll all the way at half court. I think Dennis Rodman is actually a great comp for Draymond in that regard and I definitely should have Dennis in that conversation too, probably those three, Dennis, Scottie and Draymond. And you can see the parallels, the length, the physicality, the speed, the versatility, but ultimately it’s up here. It’s the brain and Dennis and Scottie were two of the smartest defenders I’ve ever been around and Draymond is, he’s amazing in that regard, just his ability to process.
07:42 He was talking a lot after last game —
07:45 Draymond was?
07:46 Yes.
07:47 Oh, sorry.
07:47 About his Defensive Player of the Year case. You don’t have a vote, but I guess how would you see him stacking up against some of the other candidates for that particular vote?
08:00 I said it, I think he’s the best defender in the league, based on what I was talking about, the versatility within the game to play any role, guard the ball, guard the post, guard a wing, blow up a play from the weak side. I think he’s the best in the league at that and I think that combination is the most important thing, but other guys have great claims, too. Rudy Gobert is amazing as a rim protector and what Wembanyama is doing is breaking the mold of what players are supposed to be doing, but I’d be shocked if Draymond were not First-Team All-NBA, shocked. And I don’t even know, do the coaches vote on that or no?
08:45 100 media personnel.
08:47 Yeah.
08:48 So, Danny (Emerman) —
08:49 If it were up to the coaches, I guarantee you Draymond would be First-Team All-NBA because the other coaches feel what he brings defensively every night and I talk to them about it. Everyone in the league, every coach in the league, is just blown away by Draymond’s defensive acumen.
09:07 Should it be up to the coaches, especially for defense where media might struggle sometimes?
09:12 I trust you guys implicitly, always gonna make the right judgment. No, I don’t know. I’m not really sure how that should work. Maybe do both? Maybe have — They probably do something like that. Don’t they do a coaches’ poll or something?
09:30 The All-Star stuff, obviously the coaches —
09:32 Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.
09:33 But for the postseason awards, All-NBA teams, MVP, all that’s just media.
09:39 Yeah.
09:40 How careful do you — are you still being with Kuminga’s minutes or do you even need to be anymore?
09:47 No, there’s no need to be careful with the minutes. It’s really about, “Hey, we’re playing great. We’ve been playing really well for a long time.” I’m not breaking that up. When you find something in this league, you stick with it and we’ve got a lot of guys playing great, playing really good basketball and so JK’s just gotta come out and play as hard as he can and when he does that, good things happen and then the season unfolds from there, but yeah, you don’t go away from what’s working.
10:23 What are you seeing with him on the offensive end and him trying to reform with what this team is now?
10:33 Yeah, he’s finding his way. It’s a very different team now compared to when he left. When he left, as I’ve talked about it many times, he was playing the best basketball of his career. We were running things through him and so he had the ball in his hands a lot and was very successful, but now we have Jimmy Butler and we’re gonna put the ball in Jimmy’s hands. That’s an easy decision. Jimmy and Steph are gonna have the ball, so I think JK is having to play off the ball a little bit more and that’s a tougher assignment for him. He’s much more comfortable with the ball, so a little tricky for him, but we talk and he understands that it’s about winning and as long as he goes out and plays as hard as he can with energy when he’s out there, then good things are gonna happen. And we know how this league works. things change in a moment’s notice and he’s just gotta keep plugging away. Thank you guys.
00:00 Yes. Yeah. It’s always, though.
00:06 DRAYMOND GREEN: Brandin was mentioning that you were telling guys, “Don’t help off of your guys, give me Giannis. We’re gonna get beat. Giannis is gonna do it one-on-one.” What kind of focus did you have just on strictly that matchup in this game?
00:24 I was when you’re going against one of the greats, you gotta be locked in, so I came into this game with a mentality to try to stop him. I didn’t want guys to overhelp because if he goes off and he get 40 and we stop everybody else, we still got a great chance of winning the game. So I just didn’t want them getting overhelping too much and all of those guys like Taurean Prince or Brook Lopez, who got it going there for a minute, Kuz. I didn’t want them guys to end up kind of taking them home because we’re overly focused on Giannis and so just was trying to tell the guys, be there early, but don’t stay there. Be there early and then start exiting out to your guy, I’ll get back. And we struggled there with it in the third quarter, but we were great the first two quarters and we were great the fourth quarter, so we ended up figuring it out again, which was great.
01:23 How would you describe what Jimmy does, can do offensively when he decides to kind of ratchet it up?
01:29 Well, he is who he is. He’s incredible offensively. He commands so much attention and, for us, that’s great because he’s allowing everybody else to get to spots where they’re comfortable and either get layups or open jump shots, so when he’s being that aggressive, which obviously we needed him to be that aggressive tonight with Steph out, one of the toughest matchups in the NBA and we’ve seen that for years on end now.
02:03 How much of that aggression out of Jimmy is kind of like a preview of what it could look like in the games that really matter, Playoff Jimmy and everything?
02:11 Yeah, I have zero doubt that it won’t look like that. I think it’ll look just like that and it’ll continue to get better. Jimmy, he’s still figuring out his spots. Guys are still figuring out where he wants you on the court when he has the ball here or when he has the ball there, where he wants you on the court and so we’re still figuring all of that stuff out, but we know what he’s capable of and I always tell the guys, when all else fails, just shot clock get to six, when you got nothing, throw him the ball. He’ll figure it out and he did that tonight, all night. It was beautiful.
02:45 It’s award season, getting towards it. Do you think you have a Defensive Player of the Year case this year?
02:51 I think, obviously, we keep winning and close this year out strong, most definitely. I don’t know, I look around the league, I don’t see many players impacting the game on the defensive end the way I do. I don’t see many players completely throwing off an entire team’s offense the way I do. So, 1,000%, especially with Wemby going down, seemed like he had it won and, now, it’s right there. So, 1,000,000% I have a case and I’ll continue to build that case for these next 13 games, but tonight, I think was a prime example of that.
03:38 We’ve talked about Jimmy getting used to this offense with Steph. Obviously, things have gone a certain way for many years, but on defense, you run the show, clearly. Has it been an easy adjustment, you think, just to drop into this? It seems like you guys, certainly in that fourth quarter, you were really tied together with the help, the show, the help, all the backside being protected. What’s that been like?
03:59 It’s so easy to add him in because he is like me. He thinks like me. He sees the floor like me or better. I’m not gonna sit here and act like, “Oh man, I’m the world’s greatest.” And he’s not. There are certain things that he see better than me and so to have a guy like that, you add him into the fold, for me, it makes me all the more comfortable to know that I can be aggressive, that I could take some chances and know that at the end of the day, there’s gonna be Jimmy on the backside to cover up any mistakes that anyone makes. And so that’s usually me in that position, covering up for mistakes, but when it allows me to — you think of an offensive player, right? You’re gonna give a guy who’s incredible offense, you’re gonna give them a little more freedom than you may give others. They’re probably gonna take a little more chances or a shot that maybe other guys wouldn’t take. I think that’s me on the defensive end. I may do something that’s unorthodox. I may do something that’s not quite how we schemed it, but it’s something that I saw could work. And every now and then you take those chances that don’t work and you can get burned. With Jimmy on the backside, he covers it up. He’ll see me guard and he’ll plug that spot and so it’s been extremely easy and very comforting for me adding him to the fold and he makes the game a lot easier for all of us on both sides of the ball.
05:27 He said the same thing about you, how it’s fun to be more aggressive.
05:33 That’s a good partnership.
05:35 Yeah, I was gonna say that because he did say that and he also said that, obviously, he always had a great appreciation for your defense, but that you sometimes are like five plays ahead of everybody on defense. A lot of guys do that on offense. When you hear a guy like Jimmy talk, come to you, talk to you about that, talk about you like that and how important you are to the defense, like Tim said, he said that you let him do what you just said you’re doing. So what does that mean for you guys going down the stretch here that you guys have that kind of symbiotic relationship on defense?
06:04 I think it means well for this team, that’s for sure, which is why it’s no surprise to me that we’re, what, before last night, I don’t know what, after last night, but we were No. 2 defense in the league since he’s been here, by a few ticks. That’s no surprise to me when you speak like that, but it’s great, man, to have a guy like that, that feels the same way that I feel about him, that he feels about me. That’s kind of a match made in heaven, but I’m extremely appreciative of him speaking to me that way because, like I said, he is someone that’s smart as hell that I respect his basketball IQ. And so I’m thankful that he sees me in that light. You always want to be respected by your peers and for him to say I’m five — but I don’t know if I’m that far ahead, but I appreciate it.
06:58 He also said that you would hate it if a five-year-old scored on you.
07:03 Well, one million percent. I hate when anybody score on me, or I hate when my man score on someone else. I’ll be losing my mind.
07:10 Draymond, pre-Jimmy — I’m not, not to disparage any of your teammates — but pre-Jimmy, if on a normal night, if you’re facing Giannis and you don’t have Jimmy back there, are you having to do more not just on Giannis, but are you worried about other things and trying to shore up the defense in other areas that you don’t have to worry about now?
07:30 I just think trust is earned in anything and he’s quickly earned that trust and so it does allow you to focus on things that you’re like, “Ah man, I know, I don’t have to get there, Jimmy’s there,” and, like you said, it’s no disrespect to any of our teammates, but some people are better at some things than others. That’s just the world we live in. That’s the game we play and Jimmy’s great at seeing the play weak-side from seeing the whole floor and identifying a problem. I always say, if there’s a fire on defense, I’m gonna go put the fire out. I’m not just gonna sit there and watch it and Jimmy’s the same way. And that type of aggressiveness, that type of attention to detail, it’s hard to score on that when a guy sees a problem and they just go address it right away. So oftentimes you see guys on the defense side of the ball, they see a problem and they just sit there and look at it. And you’re like, “Yo, go!” Like, it’s a problem, you know it’s a problem and Jimmy doesn’t. He see a problem, he goes. I see a problem, I go. And so it really allows you to focus and lock in on that matchup, 100%.
08:45 You said that with Jimmy you’re able to take more risks on defense, take chances. I was wondering tonight, was there a moment, especially in that fourth quarter, where you were able to kind of take a chance on defense that maybe you wouldn’t have been able to take if Jimmy went on the floor?
08:58 I think just picking him up full court. I picked Giannis up full court for most of the game. Anytime he got the ball, I was there to pick him up and that right there, every time I picked him up, Jimmy said, “Yo, keep going, go pick him up, I’ma be in the gap if he get by you. You just run to my man if he get by you,” and so again, with that type of communication, it’s very comforting as a defender to be that far off the floor and knowing that you have someone back there that has your help because it’s daunting to be that far up the floor with Giannis Antetokounmpo with the ball coming downhill. It’s a tall task and so just to know that you have that help back there, if you do get beat, it allows you to play with that aggressiveness to be able to pick him up and stop his momentum.
09:45 On the Defensive Player of the Year, you’ve won one, Kevin Garnett won one, Tim Duncan won none.
09:53 Crazy. They can have mine. He should have seven of them.
09:57 It’s hard to go year by year, right? But historically, that doesn’t seem right. Why do you think the voters have had maybe a hard time with that award?
10:06 Because I think the voters look at stat numbers and — I don’t want to oversell myself because I have so much respect for Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett — but I do think I’m that great defensively and if you don’t watch the game, you can miss it and I think if you just go look at the stats, it don’t always tell the story. And so for a player like KG, for a player like Tim Duncan, myself, it ain’t all about the blocks. It’s not all about the steals. What are you covering? And I think, like myself, they cover for everybody and when you can cover for everybody, sometimes you can get a lot of steals and there’s guys covering for you. Because you’re getting a lot of steals, you’re probably taking a lot of risk. We cover for people and I think that’s why I have one and they have one, because you — I mean, you got some people that has a vote on the East Coast, they’ll probably see us play four times a year and if you look at the stats, you’re gonna be like, “Oh, Draymond average one steal and a block. Nah, those numbers don’t jump off the page at you, but you’re gonna watch me play and then you’re gonna ask the opposing coach, what did I do to their offense? It’s a different story. Same for Timmy D, same for KG. And so I think when you look at it, the award is widely based off statistics and those statistics don’t always tell the story. Some guys get the stats and get picked on. Some guys get the stats and can be a liability to their defense. They take too many chances, the defense break down. We don’t do that. Sometimes we get punished for it, but — championships, championship, championships. All three of us got, so I’m sure, just like myself, they’d much rather have those than more Defensive Player of the Years. But I want another one and I ain’t retired yet, so shout out to them OGs, they are incredible, great. But I still got a chance.
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