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It would have been foolish to judge the Warriors after their initial struggles this season.
No matter how bad the Dubs looked to start the season against the Nets and the Bucks. No matter how unnecessarily close the games vs. the Bulls and the Pistons were. You had to hold your tongue.
After all, Golden State did not have Draymond Green on the floor for those games.
The Warriors have Green now, though, and suddenly, they look like an entirely different basketball team — a winning basketball team.
Isn’t it funny how that works?
“This feels like the beginning of the regular season to me,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after Monday’s 137-106 rout of the Kings, giving the Warriors wins on both ends of their home back-to-back.
And if it is just the start for these Warriors, some exciting things might be ahead for this team.
Green’s impact on the Warriors has always been difficult to properly explain and impossible to quantify. Kerr calls him the “heartbeat” of the team, but even that might be underselling it.
The best I can do: Green is the ultimate winning basketball player. Few can match his intensity and on-court clairvoyance — his basketball IQ is jaw-dropping — and he holds his teammates to a high standard.
If you have a competent roster on the floor around Green, that team can’t help but win. That fire and vision rubs off on them.
And these Warriors certainly qualify as competent.
Don’t look to the box score to understand Green’s full talismanic qualities. If you looked at his line, you’d think he was a scrub. This dude has only made one field goal this entire season.
No, to understand Green, you have to do something that those who yell over the basketball discourse — those who “stan” for players, not teams, and only consume the sport via YouTube highlights and Instagram commentary — refuse to do:
You have to actually watch the game.
By taking in the full 48, you can’t help but appreciate all the little things — those things that don’t show in the box score; those things that constitute winning basketball — that Green does.
And Monday night’s win was chock full of them.
The Warriors defense remains porous by dynasty standards, but they’re showing real bite now that Green — the best team defender in the league — is back on the floor.
The offense is unquestionably clicking. The Warriors are being more direct in their offense because of the inclusion of 7-foot rookie center James Wiseman — a bonafide unicorn center the likes the Warriors have not possessed in the Kerr era — but that doesn’t mean that they’re playing a James Hardenesque isolation offense.
Curry might be initiating more actions, but Green’s value as a screener and passer give the Warriors a verve off of that straight-line play. Double team Curry at your own peril. With Green on the floor, the Warriors are able to play north-south and east-west on offense. Monday, the Warriors set the league’s season mark for assists in a game with 41.
Green had five of those assists, but his impact on the game felt far more significant than that.
No, he was the hub of a team that’s showing flashes of something better than the Western Conference average. He was the conductor of an orchestra that is starting to figure out each other’s tempo.
An extremely vocal conductor, it should be noted.
“The reality is that guys don’t know where to go,” Green said. “We’re all figuring each other out.”
“It’s important that I’m pointing guys in the right direction. The majority of the time that leads to Steph flying out off a pin-down or something and when that happens, he draws so much attention that he creates better looks for everyone else. It’s important that we get that moment and it’s as important to make sure I’m directing that movement and helping guys get that understanding.”
Though Sunday’s 62-point Steph Curry explosion feels wasted without fans in the stands, there are some benefits to pandemic basketball.
The biggest? You can hear Green directing that action on the court.
Green’s voice has always found its way onto broadcasts in the past, though such interjections were usually followed by an apology from the announcer.
But even with the fake crowd noise in the empty arena, Green is effectively replacing the broadcasting crew.
(And given the state of the Warriors’ broadcast, this is a welcome development.)
The soundtrack of Green never stops and, ergo, the Warriors rarely stop moving.
You can hear Green trying to light a fire under Andrew Wiggins’ rear while he tries to simultaneously calm down Kelly Oubre. All this while he’s teaching a masterclass on defense to Wiseman. If you ever wanted to know when a big man should switch, what the proper rotations are, and how to turn offense into defense, you can sit in on it from the comfort of your own couch.
As for Green and Curry? They don’t need to speak. Those two are on a private telepathy channel that’s reserved for the best of the best.
There’s something to that five-man unit. Something that even the most ardent Warriors pessimist can’t deny; something that a Warriors’ optimist couldn’t have foreseen.
Where it takes the Warriors is yet to be determined, but it should be a fun and interesting ride.
And Green will be at the center of the whole operation.
