Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports
Draymond Green: Three-time NBA champion. Three-time All-Star. A potential future Hall of Famer.
And a psychic.
Last week, before the Warriors embarked on this four-game winning streak to begin this five-game homestand, the star forward had an epiphany.
He turned to Alec Burks during a shootaround and shared the latest title — soothsayer — on his resume.
“We’re about to win five games in a row,” Green said he told Burks. “And he was like, ‘All right, cool.’ And then last game, ‘We’re at three.’ I just saw him again, I’m like, ‘We’re at four.’”
If the Warriors take down Luka Doncic’s Mavericks on Saturday at Chase Center, Green will get questions about which numbers to play in the lottery.
Somehow, a team that was 5-24 is now 9-24 after a tremendous fourth quarter in a galvanizing 105-96 victory over Phoenix, a win that was marked by a brief, sterling debut — by Alen Smailagic — a resilient second and third quarters, in which the Warriors wouldn’t go away, and a last period that displayed a level the team hadn’t touched this season.
The frame ended 39-18, as a young Suns bunch was completed demolished. They turned the ball over 27 times on the night — to the Warriors’ 11 — and looked like the team that was missing its superstars.
The Warriors looked like a team that believes it can head for respectability rather than the best odds for a top pick.
“This is a game we wouldn’t have won a month ago, but we stayed with it,” Steve Kerr said after D’Angelo Russell led the way with 31 points, Burks poured in 11 in the fourth and Draymond Green’s 3 was the clincher. “It’s the kind of game that you have to be resilient to win when things aren’t going your way.”
Green took it a step further.
“We’re getting better as a team,” said the forward who went just 4-of-14, but always seems to hit the big shot. “A month ago, we would have lost this game by 40. … We would have been blown out of the gym. But we’re putting it together.”
Exactly one month ago, Golden State was coming off a resounding victory over Chicago in which Eric Paschall scored 25 to put a bunch of rookies on his back to improve to 4-15. Paschall was a scratch Friday, and while Ky Bowman excelled off the bench, the key contributors have become the veterans.
Glenn Robinson III went 4-for-7 for 12 points, but slowed Devin Booker better than any Warrior could. Sure, the star guard scored 34, but only six came in the deciding fourth, when the Warriors forced the ball out of his hands.
Willie Cauley-Stein had a quiet nine points on 4-of-6 shooting. Damion Lee has looked like a piece that can’t be demoted back to the G League, finishing with 16 points, eight rebounds and three steals. Burks was perhaps the biggest final-stanza difference-maker.
“You can’t stop us. You can only hope to contain us,” Kerr joked in a spirited postgame media session.
The Warriors have learned to close out games. Can they learn to close out Green’s predictions?
