Yeah. I love to hate on Draymond as much as the next guy, but come on. This was a fucking masterclass.

is Draymond a top 10 defender of all time?

this is a fucking sick compilation + camera angle.

more of this shit please NBA

People forget that while KD to the warriors supercharged the dynasty, Draymond replacing David Lee in the Warriors starting lineup raised them from a good team to a contender. Plus him being able to guard 1-5 is one of the reasons why their death-ball lineups were so effective.

He put the damn clamps on Kawhi…Ive never seen Kawhi clamped like that

Ah man, this is beautiful defense. Okay, I’ve got to rant about this for a sec.

Kawhi’s main method of getting down hill as an old man is using timing and tempo mixups to create little gaps of space that either let him pull up, or leverage the threat of his shot to create contact and drive through his defender. Against the Warriors in particular, he’s really trying to exploit his size advantage against their small ball lineups, so the Clippers main method of attack is wing-to-guard PnR to spring him downhill or force space for a 3. You can see him repeatedly bringing Curry and Podz into the action, only shifting over to more standard wing-to-big PnR once that’s proven not to work.

So, what are the defensive advantages of small-to-small screens? Normally, there’s a degree of switch protection, but that’s not really the case with Kawhi since he wants the switch to begin with. Instead, the thing Golden State can really capitalize on is the mobility advantage. Smalls can more easily hedge and double the ball-handler, both because they can get out to the level of the screen faster and because they can recover to their man more efficiently.

However, this still leaves things for the Clippers to attack. A double obviously leaves the roller wide open, and a hedge can be punished by the offensive player attacking downhill as the hedge is forced to retreat. This is where Draymond comes in, because he’s completely shutting off Kawhi’s ability to access these options. If you look closely at the moment before each screen, Draymond is often shading Kawhi to the opposite side of the screen, encouraging him to use them. Then, as Kawhi tries to use the pick, Draymond closes the distance and creates contact in the direction that Kawhi is moving. This keeps Draymond nice and close to Kawhi as he comes off the pick, but it also forces Kawhi to take a very high, very wide path off of each screen.

This does two things:

1. It makes the pass back to the roller incredibly difficult. Because Kawhi is forced so far outside, Draymond can more easily block off any angles back towards the roller. It’s still possible to thread this pass through, but Kawhi isn’t a dangerous playmaker to begin with, so the fact that the angle is really small to begin with prevents him from making that pass nine times out of ten.

2. It makes it way, WAY harder for Kawhi to attack straight downhill into the space that the hedging defender would leave. His momentum is pushed so far up the court that it’s extremely difficult for Kawhi to try and redirect himself down into the paint. Instead, he’s forced to make a curved run, coming in from the wing and pushing inwards. This gives Draymond an incredibly efficient inside angle to chase with, since he can just play off of Kawhi’s inside shoulder and completely stonewall him from the basket. On top of all of that, since the curved drive travels a further distance than a straight-line drive, any paint help has way more time to arrive and get set before Kawhi can potentially take a shot.

From there, it’s kind of game over. Kawhi isn’t a good enough playmaker to break the trap to begin with, and the contact means he can’t get downhill without being completely inhaled by Draymond. His best bet for individual scoring would either be pulling from 3 aggressively or getting Draymond into the mid-range and then trying to size him up, but either one is a pretty terrible idea given you’re either shooting into a hedge or isolating one of the best perimeter defenders of all time. It’s beautifully executed defense.

De-fense

clap clap

Draymond can defend. He’s one of the greats at it. I hate his antics but ball don’t lie

Reddit won’t like this.

Kawhi was having fits all night. Draymond did an amazing job at pressing him and making it difficult. Those steals and deflections were amazing

Now that’s Kawhi’s older and slower, Draymond is his worst matchup.

Truly stupid play calling or just incredibly low iq screening by the Clippers.

Kawhi need to work on his double team court vision

Draymond was guarding Kawhi like he owe him money 😭

But where are the blocked shots and all the stats I can see listed in a column, hmmmmm? (/S)

Seriously underrated throughout the Warriors dynasty, and should have more than 1 dpoy.

Draymond is a winner. The warriors don’t have a dynasty without him. He might not play pretty basketball but it gets the job done.

Related: towards the end of the 4th he winced and grabbed his knee area like he just sustained a non-contact knee/achilles injury, right? Is that something he does sometimes? Like sorta feign an injury, lul the enemy to drop their guard?

Look at me, I’m de Klaw now

Jerry Stackhouse deserves credit as the Warriors coach most focused on defense

Feels like Kawhi is a pretty ethical baller, if it was some other dude, Draymond would probably in foul trouble or would have been ejected by the 3rd quarter due to tilt.

I cant stand that donkey but damn did he clamp down

Draymond’s defense coupled with Kawhi’s weakness at punishing double teams really broke the Clippers in the clutch.

This Draymond Green guy is pretty good at defense huh?

Ball Don’t Lieeeee, it don’t lieeee 😈

Draymond was awesome but man these NBA coaches are so trash. Like if you told me the gameplan is for Kawhi to catch the ball 35 feet from basketball and have Brooke Lopez play 37 minutes of drop pnr defense Id have told you Clippers lose

Generational headcase