OAKLAND — After two games in the NBA Finals, Draymond Green leads the Warriors in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and three-pointers.
“I think we’re surprised the way they won, yes,” Tyronn Lue admitted after the 110-77 loss.
Green is curb-stomping the Cavaliers, ripping their game plan to shreds and cackling while he does it. Cleveland has been giving the All-Star forward wide open looks on purpose, so they can key in on Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. What Lue didn’t full grasp is that if Green started rolling from downtown, the snowball effect within the Oracle Arena crowd would be devastating.
“When they get loud and all of a sudden you hit a shot, it makes the defensive end a little easier,” Green said.
So much easier. Cleveland kept running into a brick wall when they had the basketball and all of a sudden, boom: a 20-2 second quarter run spurred by wide open Green three-pointers from the top of the key. Even with LeBron James on the floor during the run, the Cavaliers couldn’t stop the bleeding and never recovered on Sunday. And the way it’s looking, they won’t recover in this entire series.
According to Elias, Green was 6-of-9 for 15 points in Game 2 when his shot was uncontested, hitting three of his five 3-pointers on such shots. Green has been left open more than any other player this series.
“The way they’re playing defense against our guards, Draymond’s going to be open all day,” Steve Kerr said. “So he’s a good three-point shooter. We like it when he gets that shot in rhythm, and he knocked them down tonight.”
The Cavaliers cannot move forward with this game plan, even if they have been effective against the Splash Brothers. Curry scored 18 points in Game 2 and Thompson had 17, both improvements over Game 1.
Cleveland still lost by 33. The strategy of taking away Curry and Thompson has backfired in their faces.
“The guy made shots. Not only when we left him open and contested late, but he made shots in our face,” LeBron James said. “He had five threes. And we know he’s a key for their team, we all know that, an All-Star for their team. And he made some big plays both offensively and defensively, obviously. We know what he does defensively for that team, so game ball to him.”
Green was flexing, clapping and barking on the court in Game 2. But his demeanor at the podium after the victory was much more businesslike. He’s not going to get ahead of himself with words in a press conference.
“Only thing we did tonight was defend homecourt,” Green said. “We didn’t do anything special. Everybody’s going to look and say, oh, man they won by 35 points or 30 points whatever it was, but at the end of the day, we just want to win, and we defended our homecourt. Like Klay said, he already spoke on it, the toughest part is going to Cleveland. So now we’ve got to look ahead to that and go in with an even higher focus level than we had at home.”
The Warriors are halfway home to putting up another banner inside Oracle Arena.
Green is halfway home to taking home the NBA Finals MVP trophy.
