We have no idea what the Warriors look like without Draymond Green
Stephen Curry has been the NBA’s Most Valuable Player in each of the last two seasons, and deservingly so, but there’s a strong argument to made that Draymond Green is the Golden State Warriors’ most indispensable player.
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Green led the NBA in plus-minus during the regular season, with Golden State outscoring opponents by 1,070 points in 2,808 minutes with him on the floor and getting outscored by 188 points in 1,168 minutes without him. He’s second only to LeBron James in plus-minus during this postseason, with the Warriors topping their opposition by 153 points in Green’s 792 playoff minutes, and posting a -15 in 221 minutes without him. He leads Golden State in postseason minutes, rebounds, assists and steals, and trails only Splash Brothers Curry and Klay Thompson on the team in playoff points.
His presence has proven even more pivotal in these 2016 NBA Finals. Not only have the Warriors outpaced the Cleveland Cavaliers with Green on the court (+36 in 152 minutes) and fallen without him (-7 in 40 minutes), but Golden State’s legendary offense and venomous defense have both all but cratered with Green on the bench, according to ESPN Stats and Info:
With Green on the court, the Warriors have outscored the Cavaliers by 13.6 points per 100 possessions, as their offensive efficiency is 113.8. With Green on the bench, the Cavaliers outscored the Warriors by 9.6 points per 100 possessions, with the Warriors’ offensive efficiency dropping to 98.3. […]
[Green has] spent time this series guarding each member of the Cavaliers’ “Big Three,” and he’s held the three to a combined 36 percent shooting this series.
He has faced [LeBron] James for a total of 18 action plays. James is 5-for-14 with four turnovers in those possessions. He’s also held Kevin Love to 5-for-13 shooting and Kyrie Irving to 4-for-12 shooting.
Golden State’s four most effective lineups in the series have all featured the 6-foot-7 mold-breaker at center, including the vaunted Death Lineup. Draymond-at-center changed the 2015 Finals, shook the NBA this season, and has, through four games, been the single most significant contributing factor to the Warriors’ 3-1 series lead:
The All-Star’s ability to perform whatever task Steve Kerr sets out for him — starting power forward next to a traditional center, reserve center in the most devastating lineup in the league, backup point guard, screen-setter and facilitator, glass-cleaner and pace-pusher, switching every defensive assignment and guarding all five positions in the space of a game, etc. — unlocks the peerless versatility that has made Golden State the class of the NBA on both ends of the floor. He’s the proverbial queen on the chessboard … and thanks to the cumulative effect of weeks of borderline-at-best and now-damaging on-court behavior, he’s off the chessboard for Monday’s Game 5. So what do the Warriors do now?
From a tactical perspective, in all likelihood, pretty much the same stuff they always do. (Especially after flipping the switch in Game 4 away from using Green as the primary screen-setter for Curry in the pick-and-roll, preferring to attack Cleveland’s guards and wings to free Steph up, as detailed by NBA.com’s John Schuhmann.)
“I don’t think we need to change things offensively,” Kerr told reporters Sunday. “We’ll still play our game. We want to move the ball. We want to get up-and-down. So that doesn’t change. Obviously, we’ll miss his production, but other people can fill that void.”
Among the “other people” Kerr discussed specifically on Sunday:
• Scoring guard Leandro Barbosa, one of the heroes of Golden State’s Game 1 win, who caught a DNP-CD in Game 4 but is shooting 70.6 percent from the field in this series and has proven capable of wrong-footing the Cavs with his pace-pushing (and who also got some friendly bounces as wild flings fell through the hoop in Games 1 and 2);
• Second-year forward James Michael McAdoo, extracted from mothballs to provide energy and quickness for 7 1/2 hit-or-miss minutes in Game 4, who was on the floor in Green’s place as a small-ball five when the Warriors began the fourth-quarter run that won the game, who offers some of Green’s defensive activity and ability to switch assignments but very little of his offensive flavor, and who might be in line to get the second start of his NBA career in a potential Finals closeout game.
There’s not a whole lot of precedent to lean on here, because Green’s been among the most durable and present forces in the league throughout the Warriors’ run to championship status. He has missed just four games over the past two seasons, and only one during the 2015-16 campaign; the Warriors lost it, falling to the Denver Nuggets to suffer their defeat of the season despite 38 points and nine assists from Curry.
In that game, Golden State started two reserves: big man Jason Thompson and veteran swingman Brandon Rush. The Warriors released the former in late February; he finished the season with the Toronto Raptors. Rush, however, is still around, and has periodically slid back into Kerr’s rotation throughout the postseason, logging at least one appearance of 10 or more minutes in each of the first three rounds of the playoffs.
The 6-foot-6, 210-pound wing was on the inactive list for Golden State’s Game 4 win. But with The Vertical’s Shams Charania reporting that guard Ian Clark has been told he’ll be inactive for Game 5, it seems a good bet that Kerr will give Rush a look at some point as he attempts to replace the shooting, savvy and defensive adaptability that Green brings to the table.
“You don’t look for one guy to try to pick up the slack,” said Andre Iguodala, who had four points, six rebounds, four assists, two blocks and a steal in 32 minutes off the bench in that Green-less Denver loss. “You look for 14 guys to pick up the slack in little bits here and there. I get a few more rebounds, [Harrison Barnes] get a few more points. The responsibility of the playmaking, we’re going to do that collectively, Shaun Livingston and myself. There is an opportunity for a guy to step in. The whole world is watching for him to make a name for himself.”
According to publicly available lineup data compiled by NBAwowy.com, none of the Warriors’ eight most frequently used Draymond-less lineups featured Curry. This makes sense; as was the case last year, Curry-Green was the Warriors’ most frequently used two-man pairing this season, with Draymond on the court for 91.1 percent of Steph’s minutes and Curry on the floor for 87.7 percent of Green’s playing time.
The one that got the most run: the traditional starting lineup, with fellow Finals MVP frontrunner Iguodala in Green’s place. That unit has logged just 25 total regular- and postseason minutes, outscoring opponents by four points. To whatever extent you can glean trends from such a small sample, that group both scored and conceded points at a significantly higher clip than its regular-season counterpart, buoyed in part by Iguodala’s playmaking but done in by the absence of Green’s linchpin switchability and rim protection.
As noted by Rob Mahoney of Sports Illustrated, the latter of those two gaps could be filled by Festus Ezeli … should he able to work his way out of the doghouse in which he’s apparently found himself of late, with Kerr limiting him to just four total minutes over the past two games, elevating the likes of McAdoo and Anderson Varejao over Ezeli, who this time last year was playing a major role in closing out the Cavs, in Golden State’s rotation.
Bigs like Bogut, Ezeli, Varejao and Marreese Speights (who served as the five-man in several of Golden State’s most commonly used no-Draymond reserve lineups) will have to play more significant roles, especially if Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue aims to take advantage of Green’s absence by inserting more size into his rotation by reinserting Kevin Love into the starting lineup and/or finding more minutes for stretch-five Channing Frye. Should Lue elect to stay smaller, though, sticking for longer stretches with veteran Richard Jefferson in the lineup to slide LeBron James to the four spot and allow the Cavs to play small-ball, the Warriors will have to mix and match with their wings … and the non-Draymond small-ball samples are pretty microscopic, too.
No small-ball unit without Green has compiled more minutes than the 16 rolled up by Iguodala, Barnes, Barbosa, Rush and Livingston. No such lineup featuring both Splash Brothers (which you’d assume to be a prerequsite of any half- or game-closing Death Lineup approximation) netting more than the two seen by Curry-Thompson-Iguodala-Barnes-Livingston.
In that configuration, and in others, starting small forward Barnes — who came off the bench in that no-Draymond loss to the Nuggets, in just his sixth game back from the late-November ankle sprain that cost him more than a month — would occupy Green’s spot as the small-ball center. As he proved at times in Game 3, he’s got the strength, athleticism and nose for the ball to hold up there for stretches, and he said before Game 4 that he’s “gotten used to” the physical pounding of playing up a spot, or even two, in the lineup over the past couple of years.
“It’s something that, physically, in the beginning, it was tough,” Barnes said at Warriors practice before Game 4. “I remember I would bang with the big boys, I’d try to come down and shoot a 3, and I just had no legs. Now I’ve gotten used to it, so it’s not that bad.”
Even so, adjusting to going up two spots in the order during critical junctures of a potential closeout game — after having already had to expend more energy on battling the likes of Love, LeBron and Tristan Thompson on the glass — would represent a major shift in approach, a huge responsibility, and something of a sacrifice for a player who’s expected to command as much as $20 million per year on the market this summer in restricted free agency.
“You don’t look at it like [you’re sacrificing parts of your normal game],” Barnes said Sunday. “You look to find other opportunities. You may be on the glass more, or be in the trail position more for some open threes. You get a chance to attack in a different way, as opposed to being on that outlet, and being one of those guys that Steph likes to pitch it to.”
All of which is to say: while we know Kerr’s comfortable enough with his full roster to lean on Varejao for crucial minutes and toss out James Michael McAdoo to guard LeBron after more than a month on the pine, and while it sure seems like Green’s teammates are circling the wagons to use his absence as fuel for their competitive fire, we have no real idea what the Warriors are going to look like tonight.
With their collection of versatile, talented, experienced two-way wing players, perhaps no team is better positioned to absorb the loss of a key starter at such a late and vital point in the season.
“We’ll figure out the lineups that we need to throw out there,” Curry said at Sunday’s practice. “We’ll figure out the plays we need to run and kind of the flow we need to have on the offensive end. Then, obviously, all five guys on the defensive end have to step up and guard your man and help each other out and play with even more energy than we have so far in this series.”
What makes Green so valuable, though, is also what makes him so difficult to replace. Even up 3-1, having to figure out how to do that facing a LeBron-led squad fighting for its postseason life can’t feel very comfortable; it promises to take monstrous efforts from a number of contributors, both those we expect (Warriors fans will hope Steph and Klay didn’t cool off any after Game 4) and those we don’t (I can’t believe we’re referencing James Michael McAdoo this much, but here we are).
“We’re going to play a lot of people, and we’ll give a lot of different looks and we’ll compete like crazy, and I think we’ll give ourselves a great chance to win,” Kerr said.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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