Draymond Green faces ‘one of the most important years of my career’ with Warriors

Ohm Inmisuk | ESPNSeptember 14, 2023 06:00 ESTReading: 10 minutes

The four-time NBA champion told ESPN that the upcoming season has nothing to do with past failures, fierce foes or even redemption. He just said: “You can’t destroy this team.”

EAST LANSING, Mich. – A long, busy day of training, competitive running and a third race Spartan training week Draymond Green found himself reminiscing about more than just his college days last Thursday during Michigan State’s annual event.
His phone vibrated with text over a photo of a pair of sneakers the power forward wore during his early days with the Golden State Warriors.

“What year was this?” Stephen Curry asked him in a text message.
Green remembered the sneakers and responded, “Man, good times.”

However, Curry didn’t think about it. Like fellow star Klay Thompson, the pair have been focused on the upcoming season and the new memories they can create.

“Yeah,” Curry responded via text message. “We’re still here. We’re not going anywhere.”

The 2022-23 Warriors season began with Green’s feud with Jordan Poole and ended with the first pre-Finals playoff exit of the coach Steve Kerr era, and the Warriors heard questions about whether this team’s era of dominance could end. Speculation is coming to an end.

However, Green signed a four-year contract extension with the Warriors worth $100 million. The Golden State Warriors traded Poole and brought in veteran Chris Paul in hopes of giving their Big Three a fifth championship.

But Green asked why stop here? With the right players, more experience and better chemistry, Green believes the Golden State trio can even rival Michael Jordan’s six championships.

“I don’t necessarily like to put numbers on things,” Green told ESPN. “But I don’t understand why we can’t win two more championships. Why not?”

There are some obstacles that could stop the Warriors. While Curry can still play at an MVP level and Thompson is determined to return to his pre-injury form, Green knows a lot will fall on his shoulders. He wanted to make up for last season’s failure, and he knew Poole’s hit ruined the team’s chemistry, and he had a hand in that. The fiery forward must put any past pain between him and Paul behind to get the Warriors back to the top.

“I think this is one of the most important years of my career,” said Green, who is entering his 12th season. “This is not about trying to save Draymond for anything. My goal is that we can help Chris Paul get his first championship.”

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when green listens As the Warriors consider adding Paul, the team’s emotional leader admits he’s not excited. He needed time to think about the possibility of engaging with a “hateful” enemy.

If anyone can bother Green, it’s the 6-foot guard, who describes himself as the Warriors’ “nemesis.” In 2014, Paul helped the Los Angeles Clippers eliminate the Warriors in seven games in the first round, leading to Kerr’s hiring the following season. Paul and the Houston Rockets fell 3-2 to the Warriors in the 2018 Western Conference Finals before the point guard missed the final two games due to injury. When asked how much he used to despise Paul, Green interrupted, rating him on a scale of 1 to 10.

“Eleven! I hate it,” Green said. “Eleven! But I think this is also a form of respect.”

Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy, who was promoted on June 16, said he needs to talk to Green and Paul to see if this partnership is feasible.

“I want to hear from both of them,” Dunleavy told ESPN. “Really, every time we make a big move, whether it’s Steph, Klay,

Draymond, you want to get a feel for it and see what they think. At first, everyone, including Chris, was a little paused. But then they thought about it and quickly said, ‘Let’s do this. This is going to be great'”.

After the trade in late June, Green said he and Paul communicated briefly and then gave each other space and time to digest everything. But since then, they’ve had “face-to-face” and phone conversations. Listening to Green talk about all the things that once drove him crazy about Paul is almost like listening to an opponent describe what it was like to fight Green in the playoffs.

“(He’s) a guy who’s at the center of everything,” Green said of Paul. “At the center of every game, the opposing team is running in the center of the defense, talking to both ends of the floor, working with the referees, working with our coaches, working with the players on every play. Elbows, disgusting.

“…Of course you’re going to hate him (as an opponent). If you don’t, guess what? You’re going to lose to him. We’ve seen a lot of guys lose to him, as well.”

The Warriors are hoping Paul can give them the same boost first seasons give all new teams: an increase in wins. In the 2020-21 season, the point guard helped the Suns achieve a turnaround in his first season in Phoenix, allowing the Suns to reach the NBA Finals from 34 wins the previous season.

But the Golden State Warriors may be going through an adjustment period as the new point guard moves more cautiously. The Golden State Warriors are the team with the shortest average time their players have the ball in their hands, averaging just over 2.7 seconds last season. According to Second Spectrum, Paul is averaging 5.6 seconds per game in the 2022-23 season, ranking seventh among players.

“Right now you don’t have an answer,” Paul said in early July. “We’ll be training and I’m sure I need to know something about them and they need to know something about me, but that’s the case with any team.”

At their best, Paul and Green are ball-handling facilitators. Both will have to play off the ball more and find ways to adapt to each other’s strengths.

“The way they adapt is their competitiveness and their intelligence,” Dunleavy said. “We’ll see how the skill sets of the players line up, and whenever you add a player like Chris Paul, I think you’ve got to figure some things out.”

What Green and Paul have in common is their obsession with winning, even if it took them a while to gel.

“We’ve gotten over that hurdle now,” Green said of the idea of ​​Paul becoming his new teammate. “But there’s another obstacle to playing together and it’s going to take some getting used to. But I’m excited about it.

“We came together as a team and we did this together and the atmosphere felt great. I’m a student of the game of basketball and Chris Paul is a teacher and I’m looking forward to learning from him.”

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driving range The MSU basketball arena was buzzing with activity as Green coached current Spartans players along with fellow NBA veterans Xavier Tillman and Gary Harris.

While the young Spartans were delivering some powerful dunks, Green turned back the clock in one drill and drained three straight dunks, a rarity after the Warriors veteran finished with 21 dunks last season.

The 33-year-old power forward also took advantage training weekAn annual reunion for the Michigan State University basketball team to physically prepare to win another championship with Curry and Thompson. The trio knew exactly the exclusive club they wanted to join.

Inside Thompson’s locker at Chase Center, the Gunners taped together a newspaper clipping with the faces of 26 players who have won five or more NBA championships.

“It’s definitely a Clay-ism,” Green said with a laugh. “But that’s what motivates Clay. When Clay is motivated, we don’t lose.”

Last season, however, the Warriors couldn’t overcome poor chemistry, mediocrity on the road and defensive woes. Poole’s battles affected the season from the start, and Green admitted it affected his ability to be an effective vocal leader. “Some trust is gone,” Cole said.

Sometimes, Green wonders if he has a chance to re-sign with the only professional team he’s ever known.

“What makes me wonder is, I don’t know if I have a chance to redeem myself,” said Green, who is on leave from Oct. 8-13. “Not because that had to happen. Was it so, did you have a chance to correct it, or was it just that? It doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t change that I was wrong. But I’m a human being and humans make mistakes mistake.

“But how do you react when things go wrong, when things are not on your side? When the whole world is against you, when the whole world is like, ‘Oh, man, now suddenly you’re not worth the money. ‘ “you win. ” Or, “You are the cancer, you are the problem”, after winning four championships.

Green credits MSU coach Tom Izzo with calling him every day in October and helping his former star student reinvent himself.

“What makes Izzo the best is a lot of things that happened during my time with the Golden State Warriors,” Green said. “…He was really important to me last year, just constant conversations.

“In October, when everything was happening, he was talking to me on the phone, ‘Are you OK? What’s going on?’ “Every day, just checking in and making sure I was OK. Sometimes when you go through something like this, you need your support system to help you get through it. And he is always there. “

It helped the versatile Green, who finished last season with a career-high 52.7 percent shooting while being a competitive defender and limiting opponents to 39.2 percent shooting, according to Second Spectrum. Second among players with 500 field goal attempts.

“You’re 30 years old, are you still doing what you’re good at?” Dunleavy said. “I think the answer is obviously yes. For us, after the season is over, we do everything we can to keep him and bring him back.”

Green said if the Warriors want to regain championship form, they need to get back on defense and find chemistry again.

“We have to get this team back together,” Green said. “You can’t destroy our team. You can destroy one player, you can destroy two players, but you can’t destroy this team. That’s what makes us unbeatable.”

After the Golden State Warriors lost to the Lakers in six games in the second round, it’s easy to forget that no one has beaten the Warriors in a Western Conference playoff series since Paul’s Clippers in 2014.

Green, however, doesn’t need a text message from Curry to remind him of the Warriors’ longevity and high spirits. Green is eager to remind his haters that he, Curry and Thompson (and now Paul) are not going anywhere.

“(The Lakers) have done it once, which is awesome,” Green said of the Lakers breaking the Golden State Warriors’ winning streak in the Western Conference playoff series. “Now someone has to do it again and again. to this point.

“And I don’t expect that to happen.”