The NBA Finals that will conclude the longest, strangest and most complicated season in league history begin Wednesday night. For the first time in six years, the game’s grandest stage will not feature the Golden State Warriors.
The closest that the Warriors’ trusty trio of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green will get to the finals is watching their former teammate Andre Iguodala, now with the Miami Heat, match up against a rival familiar to them all: LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers.
“As a competitor, you always want to be there,” Green said, “but when people ask me if I miss basketball right now, I tell them in a heartbeat, ‘No, I don’t.’ We’ve done it at the highest level that you can possibly do it for five straight years.
“What I do miss,” Green continued, “is competing at the absolute highest level. I will miss playing in the finals and knowing that every basketball player in the world is watching me play — performing on that stage.”
With the Warriors excluded from the NBA bubble because of their lowly 15-50 record, Green still managed to find a new performance platform with no shortage of exposure. He made multiple appearances on TNT’s “Inside The NBA” in recent weeks and was widely praised for the depth of analysis he brought to the sport’s most celebrated studio show.
Green described the relief defenders feel when Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid shoots from long range. He went into deep detail about how the Portland Trail Blazers could set screens closer to midcourt to help free up Damian Lillard against the Los Angeles Clippers. He provided damning video evidence to support criticism of Nikola Jokic’s defensive effort for the Denver Nuggets. Green also offered many more playoff insights on Twitter on nights he wasn’t working in TNT’s studio.
“I love to try to educate through the TV position,” Green said, citing Tony Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback, as an analyst he takes cues from.
“The offense is lined up and the defense is lined up and he’s telling us exactly what the offense is about to do because of what he sees,” Green said. “Similar to Tony Romo, I want to give the world insight on what is actually going on out there on the court, as opposed to people thinking they know what’s going on.”
Green has gone on a few recent rants against members of the news media and the public to lament that “everyone watching the game of basketball thinks they can critique” it. He told me that he envies football players because too much is happening in an 11-on-11 sport for them to have to “deal with everyone thinking they know the game.”
As occasionally happens for him with the Warriors, Green encountered some turbulence in the studio, too, incurring a $50,000 tampering fine from the league office for saying that Devin Booker staying with the Phoenix Suns was “not good for his career.”
Mostly, though, Green won plaudits for his candor and the ability to take viewers deeper than usual into modern strategy. He likewise showed that he could work well alongside TNT star Charles Barkley after years of public feuding.
“Chuck has been in the TV business for 20 years,” Green said. “Any time someone is in one particular business for that long, they’re usually pretty good — and Chuck is really good. I think when we’re out there, there’s usually several differences of opinion, and that’s fine. Our opinions don’t always have to align. He’s an amazing person and he’s an amazing talent when it comes to TV. I respect him.”
Ernie Johnson, Turner’s Emmy Award-winning host of “Inside,” praised Green as the most “naturally good” analyst he has worked with since Johnson’s longtime colleague Kenny Smith joined the show in 1998.
Said Johnson: “I told Draymond one night after a show, as everyone was putting masks on and walking to their corners: ‘Hey, life’s good for you right now. I don’t know how much longer you’re going to play, but you know right now that the day you hang them up, everybody’s going to want you to work for them if this is what you want to do.’ “
Green was scheduled to work most of the Western Conference finals for TNT but returned to California after Game 1 for the birth of his third child. He has filled the past six months with off-court pursuits after the Warriors played almost the entire season without Curry and Thompson, as the sharpshooting guards recovered from injuries.
Green has taken an active role in James’ More Than a Vote campaign aimed at combating voter suppression in Black communities. In June, Green co-wrote an editorial for ESPN with Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., urging the NCAA to pay college athletes. And his TV work has included several appearances on Turner’s “The Arena” series, which covered a number of social issues, and on CNN as a contributor to discuss the ongoing efforts of players to speak out against systemic racism and police brutality.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s activism,” Green said. “I just kind of believe what I believe in. I believe that there’s a right and a wrong in things, so if I see something that I think is wrong, I’m not afraid to speak up on that.”
Back in analyst mode, Green is picking the Lakers to beat Iguodala’s Heat in six games. “As much as I love what Miami has done in the bubble,” he said, “LeBron and Anthony Davis are too much to handle.”
The three-time NBA All-Star and former NBA defensive player of the year has already decided that studio work “will definitely make up a part of what I’m doing after I’m done playing the game of basketball.”
Yet Green is adamant, despite turning 30 in March and struggling with his shot last season, that he plans to keep playing for several seasons — and that Golden State’s title window has not closed.
The Warriors had the league’s worst record, and it remains unclear how well Andrew Wiggins fits with them or how significantly Golden State can upgrade its roster with the No. 2 overall pick in the NBA draft on Nov. 18. The games Green has been dissecting on TNT have nonetheless emboldened Green to believe that the Warriors can hush the naysayers and make a swift return to title contention, even though Curry, 32, and Thompson, 30, will have both missed more than a calendar year by the time the 2020-21 season starts.
Green’s confidence is hardly unreasonable. No one will call the Lakers a historically dominant team, even if the devastating duo of James and Davis handles Miami comfortably in the finals. The Heat, for that matter, were the East’s No. 5 seed and thus are likely to continue to face skepticism that they can remain at their current level without the benefit of the randomness of bubble conditions. The Bucks and the Clippers, presumed powerhouses all season, are in varying states of disarray after their second-round exits. The Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors and Houston Rockets also have major questions to answer after their playoff disappointments.
For all the Warriors must reassemble, there is comfort in knowing that no rival is rampaging in their absence.
“I see a league,” Green said, “that’s wide open.”
c.2020 New York Times News Service
