Three things to watch in Oklahoma City vs. Golden State’s Game 4
It isn’t an elimination game, and it isn’t if the Golden State Warriors haven’t been here before. Things are slightly different, though, this time around.
The defending champs stared down 2-1 series deficits twice in the postseason last year, prior to winning it all, and needed a playoff win on the road to tie things up. However, those eventual wins came against a lacking Memphis Grizzlies team and an injury-plagued Cleveland Cavaliers outfit.
Not an Oklahoma City club that has taken six of nine games against two teams that won a 140 combined games during the regular season, a Thunder outfit that downed the venerable (and eventually vulnerable) San Antonio Spurs, a squad that looks far more athletic and composed than these Warriors.
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And yet, for all the plaudits this OKC team should be taking in, all eyes are elsewhere. Here are three things to watch during Tuesday’s Game 4:
Draymond’s station
It doesn’t matter what angle you’re taking, as you view the Draymond Green situation.
You could have spent the latter half of Monday wringing those hands, tweeting those tweets, or turning a nationally televised basketball game full of lost teachable moments into a generic sports talk radio show – demanding that satisfaction be given and Green have been suspended.
You could have pointed to that cadre of similarly-looking shots and the NBA’s inability to determine a milliseconds worth of intent (while pointing to Draymond Green’s suddenly balled fist), and agreed with the league’s eventual decision.
You could take parts from both sides and just be glad that both teams will be at full strength on Tuesday night, or you can throw up your hands at this crooked league and vow never to watch another second of NBA basketball.
(If you’re in that last group, you either haven’t watched a second of NBA basketball since Larry Bird’s back fell apart to begin with, or you’re totally going to watch Game 4 on Wednesday night. Those types are usually the simplest to suss out.)
What is certain is that, despite the ennui that might set in after 48 hours of Draymond TV, he will be Game 4’s focal point. It’s unavoidable, and we’re just going to have deal with it.
What’s most important is how Draymond deals with things, and the subsequent dealing that the Warriors and Thunder work in as a result of his play.
Green, infamously, is coming off of a 1-9 shooting performance from Game 3, and the two free throws he hit in the wake of the incident with OKC’s Steven Adams were followed up by a 22-5 Thunder run. His defense on both swingmen and bigs was substandard, and he looked every bit of the -43 plus/minus his eventual box score revealed.
This is a long way of saying that he was going to be pressing anyway, in Game 4. Toss in the potential for martyrdom, and Green could either overexert himself (potentially exhausting himself well before halftime even hits), or fold a bit as he attempts to play in a style that hardly suits him. He’s gotten into his own head before – witness that 22 percent three-point shooting run that marked his first 10 games back from the All-Star break – but evidenced of Diminished Draymond is usually hard to find.
Still, no player (no matter how powder keg’ish their game looks) is indefatigable. Draymond spent the whole of Monday staring at his phone just like the rest of us. He’s played a combined 195 regular season and playoff games since 2014-15 tipped off, most of any NBA player, acting as a combustible sort that gives ending effort on both sides of the ball.
If, somehow, on the road and amid the boos he comes down with yet another killer two-way performance in a win and in the face of a team that has held him to C-level Draymond Ball thus far, he’ll have had to of earned your respect. From soup to, well, you know.
And if even that doesn’t win you over? Go back to those old Bird tapes.
Thunder sinking the small
The defending champs’ small ball lineup has been rightfully feted since well before Christmas. It was used in appropriate doses by the Warriors’ coaching staff, so as not to pin too many minutes on 34-year old Andre Iguodala, or run undersized center (or, “undersized power forward,” really) Draymond Green into the ground. That doesn’t mean the lineup (also featuring Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes) didn’t do its damage against an impressive array of opponents throughout the season – from future Hall of Famers down to second tier, second quarter-types.
Oklahoma City’s Andre Roberson was one of those types in Game 3, a lengthy swingman rookie OKC coach Billy Donovan chose to keep in to combat Golden State’s shift into the sticky, and he responded with yet another corker: Roberson scored 13 points in the blowout win, just his second double-figure scoring night since mid-March, hitting 3-5 from long range. He’s now hitting 62.5 percent from behind the three-point arc on the series, nearly double his season percentage.
We know, we know – small sample, just eight attempts to glean from – but confidence is a wonderful thing. Ask Dion Waiters, who is also hitting well above his averages from long range while playing impactful, compact offensive basketball in strong spurts. Fellow combatant (and usual center against GSW’s small lineup) Serge Ibaka looks reborn. His stats aren’t yet back at All-Star level (9.3 points, nine rebounds, 2.7 combined steals/blocks in 32 minutes), but he looks more engaged and consistently influential than at any point in the 2015-16 campaign.
Golden State coach Steve Kerr is being just as judicious with his small lineup in this series as ever because, let’s face it, the Thunder feature a litany of bruisers in Ibaka, Enes Kanter and Steven Adams that can bust you on either side of the ball. Depending on how trustworthy you believe team measurements to be, starting Thunder small forward Kevin Durant could be anywhere between three and five inches taller than anyone in the Warriors’ small feature.
Things aren’t as obvious as they were last June, when Kerr dumped starting center Andrew Bogut from his starting lineup prior to Game 4 of the NBA Finals against Cleveland, leading to three straight wins and Golden State’s first title in decades. Things aren’t as simple because, even after a stellar regular season, the proof isn’t in the pudding that Golden State has an advantage over Oklahoma City with that lineup.
Yet they’ll have to go to it, because it is so much of who they are. And the Thunder – from Kevin Durant pass choices to Roberson’s confidence to Waiters’ control as he attempts to salvage a broken play – will have to stay on point.
One long make-up call
Nobody wants to demean the work of Danny Crawford, John Goble and Bill Kennedy (Game 4’s scheduled crew) before they even get to the arena, but games like this can’t help but hurt some feelings.
There is the Draymond Scenario, as detailed above and on every other website in the Western world, with a furrowed brow staring down the tempestuous player that many think shouldn’t even be allowed to show up to that same arena in Game 4.
That arena stands as Oklahoma City’s home turf, Thunder (and OKC Hornets fans, before them) were loud even when they had no reason to be in years prior to this team’s ascension. The Red State hospitality that David Stern had been hoping for when helping move the team out of Seattle is sometimes in short supply. Things could get ugly.
Then there is Green’s status as he stares down a regular and postseason full of extra-curricular transgressions. One more flagrant foul or three more technical fouls, and Green would be automatically suspended for a game.
Consider this not-unlikely scenario:
Green gives a hard, playoff-style foul in Game 4, and as they’ve done since October the refs have to go over to the monitors to decide whether or not it the foul was flagrant in concert with the league’s review committee in New Jersey. In just a few minutes, the crews will have to determine whether or not a stray arm lock could determine the future of a team that set an NBA record with 73 wins this season. The league’s showcase team. The team everyone at work can agree on.
It took the NBA nearly a full day and two long hours after the league’s typical hours ended to determine that Green’s Game 3 foul only be upgraded to a Flagrant 2. Now they’re going to have to parse this information, in front of 18,000-some rabid Thunder fans, in minutes?
Draymond might not even be the toughest part of the referees’ night.
They’ll be watched with great intrigue as the counter-to-the-counter plays out. Most expected a litany of make-up calls for Steven Adams and the Thunder in the way of Monday’s decision, an idea that was then followed up by others assuming that the refs would go out of their way not to award 50/50 calls to the Thunder as a strike against narrative.
This plays into what could be a series-changing dynamic, as league MVP Stephen Curry has rarely ventured inside against the Thunder thus far, and has shot just 15 free throws in three games. Adams and big forward Serge Ibaka are masters at strong and (literally) straight-up defensive stands that come without a foul, and if the NBA’s baby-faced darling draws two quick fouls on the affable big man that got his wedding tackle handed back to him in Game 2 and 3, then the sporting world will lose its ever-loving mind.
Even if the refs, upon review, are making the right call. Even if Curry deserved the whistle. It’ll never end.
We hope this series never does.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
