SAN FRANCISCO — Draymond Green flipped off his TV with a few minutes left in the Warriors’ easy Game 3 victory over the Kings last Thursday, left his home, fought the arena traffic and got to Chase Center with one thing on his mind.
“Where’s Steph?” he yelled out to a staffer as he poked his head into the Warriors’ locker room about 20 minutes after the final buzzer. Draymond quickly found Curry in the training room, winding down from the blowout victory. And then the two leaders of this team put their heads together and immediately started planning for Game 4.
Draymond had an idea after watching the game: Why change anything from the starting lineup that rocked the Kings in Game 3 with Draymond out suspended? Why force anybody else to the bench to make room for him in Game 4?
And he urgently wanted to run it all past Curry. (Beyond the strategy talk, Draymond also very much wanted to celebrate Curry’s great performance in Game 3.) The result: Steve Kerr, who was thinking along the same lines, didn’t start Draymond in Sunday’s Game 4 and at times alternated Draymond with Kevon Looney, which kept more shooters on the floor, the same as in Game 3, and the Warriors hung on to beat the Kings, 126-125, to even the series, 2-2.
Looney played well, which is zero surprise. Jordan Poole, who would’ve been taken out of the starting lineup if Draymond went back in, played well. And Draymond started the second half alongside Looney (and with Poole out), which is when the Warriors took control of this game. Though the Warriors almost gave it back in the final minute with an all-time blunder when Curry called a timeout after the Warriors spent all of them (Kerr took the blame for not telling his players about the timeout count), this victory was exactly what the Warriors needed to put the Kings on their heels headed into Wednesday’s Game 5 in Sacramento.
And here’s why it’s an instant piece of Warriors lore: Draymond’s volunteering for a seat on the bench followed Andre Iguodala acceding to losing his starting spot at the start of the Kerr era, Curry agreeing to come off the bench for the first four games of the Denver series last year when he was coming back from an injury and Looney yo-yoing out of the lineup throughout his career.
This is just how the Warriors have always done things in this era. Figure out the best thing to do to win the next game. Then do it. And the informal Curry-Draymond summit meeting was another example of how they work through things when they absolutely have to.
“That’s nothing new,” Curry told me after his postgame news conference of the strategy session. “We always have those type of conversations. In the playoffs, it’s a little bit more fun because you’re trying to figure out the chess pieces of a certain series. But back to the Memphis barbecue spot in 2015 (before) Game 4, we always have those conversations.”
Curry is referring, of course, to his fabled mind-clearing dinner at Blues City Cafe with Draymond, David Lee and Festus Ezeli right after the Warriors had lost Game 3 to the Grizzlies and trailed the series 2-1. After that, the Warriors swept the next three games and went on to win the first title of this era.
Nobody knows how the Warriors will do in the rest of this series or the rest of the postseason, but if Curry is evoking the Blues City legend, then something important happened when he and Draymond met after Game 3. Something that was significant for Draymond and Curry, so it’s important to every part of the Warriors universe.
There was so much going on — Draymond’s battle with the league office, the Warriors falling down 2-0 and then breaking through at home in Game 3, and the understanding that a loss in this series could be the beginning of the end for this dynastic group. So Draymond had to get back to the arena to meet with Curry. The two future Hall of Famers had to keep this going.
“I don’t think a decision was made at that point, but he seemed relatively excited about what he saw in terms of adjustments we were going to be able to make tonight,” Curry said. “I think bottling up that energy was tough on him; I know he missed being out there. But it also gave him a different vantage point within the series that helped.”
After Draymond and Curry decided it was probably a good idea, Draymond went to Kerr’s office that night and told him it would be fine if Kerr wanted to keep Draymond out of the starting lineup on Sunday. Kerr agreed. And the move was made.
“I just thought that was the right thing to do, and Steph thought it was the right thing to do,” Draymond said Sunday. “I mean, I think No. 1, it’s who we always have been. You have guys on this team that are strictly about winning and about the team, and if you are a guy that is not that way, you stick out like a sore thumb because that’s been the culture here.
“So for me, it was a very easy thing. We won (Game 3) pretty handily. You going to just walk in the door like, ‘Fellas, I’m back, here’s my spot.’ No, that’s— don’t work like that. You do what’s best for the team, and you know, with me just sitting and watching that game, I just thought that was best, and I thought it was clear as day, and I thought I could see that from a mile away. Literally, a mile away.”
What was Kerr thinking when Draymond made the suggestion?
“Didn’t surprise me because I know at his core Draymond just wants to win,” Kerr said. “For all of his emotion and passion and things that he gets into with the league or the opponent or the officials, it’s all coming from a place of competitive desire. He’s one of the great competitors I’ve ever been around. He’s one of the smartest players I’ve ever been around.
“Didn’t surprise me because he recognized the same thing that I did, which made it a lot easier. The fact that he came in and suggested it, that makes it a lot easier, and then we go from there. … We always collaborate. The decisions we make are collaborative with our key players. … Steph has come off the bench — four games last year against Denver. (Andrew Wiggins) came off the bench in Game 1. You do whatever you have to do, and I thought Draymond had a great second half, really got himself going.”
In the second half, Draymond also got the assignment to guard De’Aaron Fox, who has been the Kings’ best player by a large measure in this series. After scoring 21 points on 9-of-16 shooting in the first half, Fox only made 5 of 15 shots in the second half. Draymond didn’t totally stop Fox, but nobody’s going to do that. It just was a different look, Kerr said, and he knew that Draymond would love the challenge.
Now the Warriors have to decide how to handle this for Game 5 and beyond that. It seems very likely that Kerr will put Draymond back into the starting lineup for the rest of the postseason, but the Warriors are 0-2 in this series with Draymond in the starting lineup and now 2-0 with Poole in that spot to start games. (Of course, both the losses were in Sacramento and both the victories were in Chase Center.)
My guess: It’ll be Draymond and Looney starting together in Game 5, with Poole on the bench, but there could be quick substitutions if things start off poorly for the Warriors.
Kerr, naturally, wouldn’t say what he’ll do in Game 5. And Draymond said he’d be fine with whatever Kerr decides — he added that he played 31 minutes (with 12 points, 10 rebounds and 7 assists) in Game 4, anyway.
“If that’s what Coach thinks and that’s what works, absolutely,” Draymond said. “I would have to go watch the film and see how all of those things fare throughout the course of this game. But if it’s right, it’s right and I don’t care. Play the same amount of minutes I normally play and doesn’t really matter. That’s kind of my mindset.”
Along those lines, Draymond also got whistled for a first-quarter technical foul (along with Fox) for a bit of barking just 55 seconds after he checked in for the first time. That was his first action since he was ejected in Game 2 for a Flagrant 2 foul and then later suspended, when the league made sure to point out his “history of unsportsmanlike acts.”
Was the fast technical foul a message to everybody watching? Well, yeah.
“I’m still here. … Still here, and ain’t no tech moving me off my square,” Draymond said. “You know, Fox felt the need to stand up for his guy. I respect it. I respect that 100 percent. But I’m still here, and don’t nothing change me. Been this way for 33 years. I pray I can be this way for 33 more, and it won’t just be basketball. That comes to an end. But I am who I am, and everything else just is what it is.”
And if Draymond ever has to miss a game again, which he already has said almost certainly will happen, he’ll watch the game intently. He’ll race to talk to Curry and others after it’s over. Then he’ll say what he thinks. He’ll come up with a strategy. It might include him starting the next game. It might not. And it usually will be smart. It usually will be exactly what Steve Kerr will do. And more often than not, the Warriors will win.
The TK Show: Go to Tim Kawakami’s podcast page on Apple, Spotify and The Athletic app.
(Photo: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
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