The science of seating: How Steph, Draymond, and the Warriors organize their universe

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The secret to the Warriors’ free-flowing culture — from the games to the locker room, the meeting rooms, team dinners, and the bench — is that there are very few secrets, and they are kept tightly and possibly forever.

But Stephen Curry was recently in the mood to mention one of the more classified things about what really happens on the Warriors’ bench, which helped illustrate the whole mood of those moments and this entire franchise, really.

“In garbage time, me and Chris DeMarco might play a little,” Curry said earlier this month — before his hamstring injury sidelined him for a chunk of the second round. “We pick a player for each team, see who scores the most points. Just to kinda stay engaged, have something to cheer for if it’s a blowout either way. “

That’s why you might see Curry staring at a stat sheet late in blowouts, pointing to the scoreboard, and turning to DeMarco, the longest-tenured assistant coach, in the second row, laughing and shaking his head. Finally, an answer. We never knew, until now. And this was a morsel of information that DeMarco was clearly stunned to hear repeated back to him.

“Steph told you that?” DeMarco blurted before taking a while to digest the development. “Oh well, that’s what happens when guys have been around together so long.”

That’s what happens on a team with well-established traditions, led by a superstar who loves to lead with humor and joy, and it’s all on display on the Warriors’ bench, if you look closely enough and talk to the players in the middle of all this. Which is what I’ve been doing throughout the playoffs; and I wasn’t disappointed by the tales they told and the proof of true chemistry that is impossible to miss.

If the court is their stage and the locker room their sanctuary, the Warriors’ bench is their laboratory and comedy lounge. It’s their rallying point now that they’re down 2-1 in this series and desperately need a win in Monday’s Game 3 to guarantee Curry extra time to return. It’s how the players support each other. It’s where they listen to the most urgent thoughts from the coaching staff. It’s also a living, breathing, bantering example of who they are, how their brainwaves connect, where the power centers are distributed, and how everybody else mixes in.

Of course, it starts with Curry — literally. He almost always sits in the first player seat, next to the four top coaches and assistant athletic trainer Drew Yoder, who all are closest to midcourt. If you see Curry sitting anywhere else, you know he’s in serious recalibration mode or just needs a rare mental timeout. So 99% of the time, he’s up front, including when he missed Games 2 and 3 of this Minnesota series but still plopped himself right next to Kris Weems and just a few seats down from Steve Kerr. And if you see Curry leaning into the coaches’ conversations, you are getting the point.

“I think I’ve sat there my whole career, because I want to be near the action, to hear what the coaches are talking about, kind of be in the fray,” Curry said. “You can learn a lot based on what you overhear, what they’re talking about. You don’t have to walk down the bench to have those types of conversations. But there’s only one seat up front, so it’s kind of a pecking order thing.”

And you’re there so you can give Kerr a look to convince him to get you back into the game a little quicker than planned, right, Steph?

“That never works out,” Curry said. “OK, maybe it worked once or twice. You just want to be within earshot of what’s going on so you can stay locked in.”

Everything requires balance in the Warriors’ universe, and on the bench, that means Draymond Green is almost always at the end, anchoring his own personal vector. Yin and yang. First seat and last seat. It all makes sense.

“I know Draymond likes the end of the bench, likes to be in his own space, see the game,” Curry said. “So everybody has their preferences.”

There’s a bit of a logistical issue for all teams because arenas vary the number of seats allotted for team bench. At Chase Center, where the Warriors sell the two end seats in the corner, they have 13 chairs in the front row. In the second row, there are nine more. In addition to the 15 members of the Warriors’ active roster, they have nine listed assistant coaches, and the training and equipment staff to fit.

How does everybody get a seat? Remember, there are five players on the court during action, so there’s always (barely) enough room. During timeouts, the five active players get the first seats, and the other players stand or find accommodations elsewhere.

“Steve kinda writes it on his clipboard,” Draymond said. “He comes to the bench, you see the lineup. You’re either in or you’re out. If you’re out, get the f— out the way. If you’re in, get in.”

To avoid crowding, players can either stand in the tunnel or use the exercise bike if it’s nearby. Some of the younger, more flexible ones even sit on the floor in the corner at times. One oddity of Game 1 of this series — when Buddy Hield came to the court in the wrong shorts and had to change them right before tipoff — occurred when Kerr called for Gary Payton II to sub in immediately but had to take a timeout because Target Center’s locker-room tunnels are a long way from the bench, and GP2 was nowhere near the court.

The Warriors, like most teams, bring three or four seating pads for players who want to use them, Draymond being the most likely. The pads make it easier on the back and legs as these large men try to squeeze onto regular-size folding chairs. Eric Housen, vice president of team operations and the organizer of all logistical and equipment issues (who sits on the floor), still has the special seat made for Don Nelson during his second tenure as coach, though the Warriors don’t take it along on the road or use it even at home anymore.

Anyway, those are the logistics. I asked Draymond: Why do you always sit at the end of the bench, usually right next to Kevon Looney?

“Steph and I used to sit at the head of the bench,” Draymond said. “And as time went on, David West used to sit at the end of the bench. And David West used to coach guys up down there.

“So when David West left [in 2018], I moved to the end of the bench. If I’m not at the end of the bench, Loon’s at the end of the bench. I think what it’s morphed into is, after watching David West, it’s, ‘Oh, you need a coach down there, too. You need someone coaching up there.'”

And the bench organization evolved again a little bit with the arrival of Jimmy Butler, a new personality and centrifugal force.

“Sit his ass on the floor!” Hield yelled over while I was talking to somebody else about the bench order.

Actually, Butler, not shockingly, measured the existing polarities of the Warriors’ bench and plopped himself in the middle. He’s usually situated a little nearer to Curry and the coaches than to Draymond (even though they’re almost never all on the bench at the same time, the reserved positions are always important), but Butler is also linked to the rank-and-file group of Hield, Brandin Podziemski, Moses Moody, Trayce Jackson-Davis, and Quentin Post.

“You’re kinda coming into a structure — where Jimmy, he’s not overbearing,” Draymond said. “He’s smart. So he just watches. Kinda took his space. More to the front.”

As Curry pointed out, another quirk is that his pal Payton rarely sits on the bench at all. GP2 will be in the tunnel or even on the floor, then, during timeouts slips behind the bench behind Curry to listen to or participate in all the highest-level conversations.

It can look random. But as Curry says, they’re all creatures of habit — in this and in almost all areas. The gravity of their personalities and their relationships organize things pretty clearly.

“It’s kind of split up, you have Steph and now you kinda have Jimmy towards the beginning and middle, you’ve got me and Loon on the end,” Draymond said. “So you just kinda have those veteran leaders stationed throughout. And then there’s a bunch of young guys in between.”

There are patterns within patterns. When the foundational figures are all in the game, the other players move into some of those spots — kind of like bench-area understudies. For instance, if he’s not in the game, Podziemski usually slides up to the top seat.

“There’s rarely a time when both me and Steph are out together, so I’m usually in that first seat when he’s out on the floor,” Podziemski said. “I like to be up front, too, to hear what the coaches are thinking, in terms of game plan, strategy, stuff like that.”

And Hield likes to move up closer to the front, too. If he’s not sitting next to Curry, he’s sitting next to Podziemski … or Hield’s in the game with them. It’s all about the connection.

“I’m sitting next to Steph, talking the game, just to see what he’s feeling,” Hield said. “And I like to hear the coaches, what they’re talking about, so I can get in, I can know how to help, try to be a sponge in that way.”

On the back end, it’s Draymond and Looney analyzing what’s happening in the game from the big-man point of view.

“If Loon’s still out of the game when I come out, he always asks me two questions: How’re you feeling? What do you see?” Draymond said. “Those are two things he asks me no matter what. How you feeling out there? What do you see?”

And Post, a rookie eager to learn from the veteran centers, makes sure he’s nearby.

That led to a moment that Draymond immortalized by going out of his way to praise Jackson-Davis for happily giving up his seat to Post during the Warriors’ recent play-in victory over Memphis. Rookies often sit on the floor or move to the nearby tunnel to avoid overcrowding the bench, even when they’re in the rotation. But this one time, after Post had played one of the longest consecutive stretches of his career, he asked if the more veteran TJD would move to let him sit down. As Post later noted, he wanted the seat next to Draymond so he could talk to him about some strategy.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time, you’re going to be like, ‘You can go sit on the floor, Rook, or go find a seat somewhere else,'” Draymond said that night. “But (Jackson-Davis) knew he wasn’t part of the rotation. And yet the rookie was. They are playing the same position. And he got up and he went — he literally got up and went and stood in the tunnel because there were no seats.

“So I just wanted to put that out there because that, to me, like, that’s why you win games. It’s chemistry; it’s selflessness; it’s togetherness, and I just thought that was a huge moment. And nobody else saw it except us three.”

Everybody I talked to mentioned an epic Curry explosion or some big dunk as the best times for the bench. You can see the celebrations. You can sometimes literally hear the screams through the TV microphones.

But Draymond, now in his 13th season, had some more specific choices for the most memorable and funniest bench moments of his time with the Warriors.

“When we were really young in our career, it’s when we had our thing with the Clippers and Blake Griffin shot like a corner shot, he hit the side of the backboard,” Draymond said. “And Kent Bazemore starts shouting, ‘Sideboard Heem!’ And everybody’s like falling down on the bench. ‘Sideboard Heem!'”

Sideboard what? I asked Draymond. “Sideboard Heem!” Draymond kept shouting, and yeah, it was definitely hilarious even 12 years later, just sitting next to Draymond as he recounted it.

Another one featuring a beloved early-dynasty role player:

“Marreese Speights was funny as hell on the bench,” Draymond said of the journeyman big man who spent three seasons with the Warriors — bridging the end of the Mark Jackson era and the start of Kerr’s run. “He was always saying on the bench, ‘Only two people can stop me, me and Mark Jackson. Or me and Steve Kerr. Ain’t nobody else in the world stops me.'”

In a much more recent example, the Warriors were all quite impressed and also amused when Butler came out to the bench in a full-length fur coat when he was out for Game 3 of the first-round series against Houston. Which didn’t stop Butler from issuing all his usual instructions and motivational incantations.

“I almost didn’t need a hot pack on the sidelines sitting next to him,” Curry said that night. “Plenty of heat emanating from him. … His presence matched the fit for sure.”

But it’s not always sweetness and light on the bench, naturally, especially not during the playoffs. You have the heat of the battle. All the big personalities. Sometimes the game is not going well. Sometimes there will be debates. Or fiery suggestions.

Weems, who keeps the all-important rotation sheet, has been known to receive loud and profane suggestions to abandon the set plan. (Which is up to Kerr, of course. But Weems is two seats closer to the players and is the one holding the sheet, so he hears a bit more of it.) There certainly have been other exchanges with other coaches or from player to player, in jest or not, in almost every game.

“You have to talk about all the things that can happen on the bench,” Draymond said. “Nowadays you have four coaches on the bench, you have five coaches, six coaches behind the bench. You’ve got 15 players. In a hostile environment.

“So you could imagine there could be arguments that start in the middle of the bench, there could be arguments that start at the end of the bench. When I say arguments, I’m not talking about full-blown arguments. Just disagreeing on certain things. And I think when you have voices of reason in those different positions you can kind of put out those fires.

“Make no mistake about it, if you don’t have disagreements on an NBA bench, I’ll show you a lottery team. It’s gonna happen. So the stations of the bench, if you will, it kinda helps put those fires out. And equally as important or more as teaching.”

The Warriors’ most famous example of a big blowup on the bench is the screaming match between Draymond and Kevin Durant back in November 2018, which was the first public sign that Durant wasn’t likely to return to the Warriors for a fourth season. Draymond was suspended one game for starting the imbroglio, but the two mended fences rather quickly — even if this was a clear sign that things were not going in the right direction.

As always, the bench is a living part of the Warriors’ organism — if things are good, it’s good on the bench. If things are starting to fray, it’s hard to hide on the bench.

Right now, it’s very good on the Warriors’ sidelines. There are debates and arguments, for sure, and the entire franchise is waiting to see Curry back in uniform, instead of patrolling the side of the court in street clothes. But everybody points to the Butler-Hield relationship as a signpost. They bark and babble at each other all of the time, including in heated moments during games, but it’s always constructive and neither takes it personally. One Warriors person laughingly suggested that Butler always warms up on the court before road games at the same time as Hield just so he can mess with Hield a little more.

“One thing I’ll say is we’ve never had pouters,” Draymond said. “We’ve never had guys that sulked. And that’s a big deal. You can imagine if you’re coming to the bench, as a leader, you have to deal with those things. If there’s a guy on the bench pouting, you have to deal with that. Because it can drag the energy of the group down.”

Interestingly, multiple veterans signaled out the rarely played Pat Spencer as a key voice in the middle of the maelstrom, particularly as the playoffs have gone on. After getting those tips, I watched Spencer at the center of intense discussion with various teammates, walking up and down the sideline, sometimes even onto the court to add a quick word. And nobody brushes him off.

“Pat Spencer has a great basketball mind,” Hield said. “He even talks in our film sessions. He has a lot to stay. A lot of great intel. He’s really respected.”

Even by Draymond. Or especially by Draymond.

“He sees a lot,” Draymond said. “Really adds a lot of value. He has a lot of opinions. And it’s not like an opinion where you’re like, ‘What the hell?’ It’s like, ‘I see this, you might want to take a look at this.’ Has a great understanding of the game. Not afraid to hear his own voice. But didn’t start that way. Has built up the equity to where people trust the voice. I think that’s most important. He didn’t just come out the gate (like that). He’s built up equity in the locker room, built up equity in the building. He speaks on the bench, people listen. He’s been very valuable these last few weeks.”

Said Spencer: “I think it’s pivotal for a guy like myself to be able to pick your spots. We’ve got Hall of Famers left and right in this locker room, so, one, you really have to know what you’re talking about. It’s not an opportunity for just anybody to speak up. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t pick my spots and feel like I can add value. … It’s winning time now.”

The Warriors have won a lot of games over the years. They’ll try to win at least two more this postseason to get to the Western Conference finals. They might not get there. But if they do, keep watching the bench. Follow the connections and the side conversations. It’s fascinating. It’s real. And it’s the internal hardware of everything.