HOUSTON — Draymond Green galloped next to Steph Curry in the visitor’s tunnel after the final buzzer of the Warriors’ Game 7 victory over the Rockets.
“SURPRISE! SURPRISE!” Green bellowed.
Finally, after 48 minutes of game time and three hours of tense, do-or-die Game 7 moments, Green let it all out.
Green’s Game 7 was cathartic. He completed a miniature, personal redemption arc over the course of a couple days. He admitted that the way he lost his poise in Game 6 was embarrassing, and he vowed to rectify it.
True to his word, Green held Rockets center Alperen Sengun to 9-for-23 shooting while leading a defense that bottled up Houston all night. He rallied his teammates with what Steve Kerr called a tone-setting speech the night before Game 7, then walked his talk by refusing to let officiating or physicality throw him off his game.
Subscribe to The Dime
News, gossip, and inside-the-locker-room access for Bay Area sports fans, every Friday and Monday.
“I spent the last two days embarrassed at what I gave to the game, what I gave to the world,” Green said. “I was embarrassed. So I’ve been dying, since the last game, to get out on the floor and prove who I am. One thing about this league is you’re never done proving who you are until you’re done — completely finished. So I wanted to come out and prove again just who I am, with poise, but with the same fire, the same tenacity.”
Curry is the Warriors’ soul — their ineffable yet omnipresent culture-setter and persona. Jimmy Butler has become the Warriors’ steady-beating pulse, a calming presence on and off the court.
Green, now and since he emerged in the Warriors’ first title run 10 years ago, is Golden State’s heart. The passion, the drive, the competitiveness, the emotions. All the emotions. They pump from him through arteries to the rest of his team. Positive or negative, they can be contagious. Green knew he needed to channel his embarrassment onto the court in a productive way.
“I think I delivered that and gave our guys something to follow,” Green said. “What I gave them last game to follow, they followed. And that’s why we got bullied. But I think I gave them something different to follow today. That was the message, that was the goal, and we got it done.”
At the Warriors’ team meeting on Saturday night in Houston, Green addressed his teammates by taking accountability. He pouted far too much to the officials in Game 6. His flagrant foul on Jalen Green minutes into the game was unnecessary and harmful.
“He owned up to losing his poise,” Kerr said. “He talked to the group last night and said, ‘I’ve got to be poised and I have to be better, and we’re going to come in here tomorrow and get it done.’ I think his emotional stability tonight, just his poise from the start, set the tone.”
To get to that headspace, Green changed up his routine before Games 6 and 7. He had heart-to-heart conversations with his wife, his barber, his college coach Tom Izzo, and one of his closest friends, Travis Walton. He changed up his pregame playlist from Tupac, Future and other hip-hop to slower R&B tracks from artists like SZA and Brent Faiyez. He went to the spa and meditated.
Whatever he did, it showed immediately. On the Rockets’ first possession, Green forced a Sengun miss and then a Sengun travel right after. Any time Sengun tried to isolate him, Green stood him up.
Green later picked up a technical foul for flailing his arms and making contact with Fred VanVleet after the guard reached in, but didn’t throw a tantrum. He just kept playing.
“My biggest thing to him was, let’s just come out and just play,” Walton told The Standard. “The referees going to do what they do, it’s going to be physical, so there’s a choice: either you can go back and forth with the refs, go back and forth with the players, or you can just say, ‘F— it, it’s war time.’ That’s what he did tonight. No complaining. Bad call or two, he did not complain one time.”
That technical was Green’s second of the series. He also picked up two flagrants (four in a postseason warrants a suspension) and was often goaded into turnovers by Houston’s defensive scheme that left VanVleet on him.
The Warriors still needed Green’s leadership. Green likes to defer to Curry and Butler, but they knew he had a lot to say and gave him the floor at the team meeting. His speech gave Buddy Hield chills and made him want to play the game right then (he had to wait like everyone else, and turned in the game of his NBA life of 33 points on nine 3-pointers).
“It was very emotional,” Hield said. “I was nodding my head. When a guy like that speaks who’s won four championships, who’s been in the Finals six times, he knows what it takes to win. He’s just a true professional, true leader, true example.”
“As much as I think the team needed it, I feel like I needed it for myself even more,” Green added. “You’ve got to be accountable. You can’t be a leader and not be accountable.”
Green has teetered on the line of fiery competition and losing his cool just about his whole life — from the playgrounds in Saginaw, Michigan through his time at Michigan State and in his NBA career. Last year, he wasn’t in the right headspace as he earned multiple suspensions for on-court behavior that cost the Warriors the fighting chance they have now.
But the Warriors have always stuck with Green, even through his darkest, most damaging moments. There’s never been a question of how much he means to the team, on and off the court. Just like he has straddled the line at every turn, he has also won.
Game 7 was the latest example. He finished with 16 points, six rebounds, five assists, two blocks and a steal — and the highest plus-minus of the game. He matched minutes with Sengun and was as level-headed with the ball in his hands as he was with the refs.
“Goodnight, it’s been real,” Green winked into a TNT camera as Golden State secured its fifth playoff series win over Houston in the dynasty era.
Minnesota is the next trial, both for the Warriors and Green. Star guard Anthony Edwards might be the game’s preeminent trash-talker. Rudy Gobert is perhaps Green’s biggest personal foe; his headlock of the French center last year earned him a five-game suspension. Their beef spans back years before that.
The Warriors need Green to stay in the mode he found in Game 7.
“No better lesson than tonight,” Curry said. “Make it about basketball. He doesn’t need to be a mute, like not talk or be demonstrative. We don’t want that type of Draymond. But conserve the energy towards us, our huddles. Even when he had that mix-up with VanVleet, he didn’t react or talk to the refs trying to plead his case. It didn’t go his way, it was an unfortunate call, but he kept it about basketball.
“He’s going to have to continue to do that, knowing the minutes we’re playing and the tough test that Minnesota is going to present.”
Green said he’ll know he’ll be locked in mentally in the Western Conference Semifinals. He gave his teammates his word. Now they’ll just need to follow their heart.