Warriors’ Draymond Green puts on a defensive masterclass after narrowly escaping ejection

The Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets combined to score 213 points in Game 4, and the biggest play of the night didn’t involve any of them. It happened at the 2:44 mark of the second quarter. Draymond Green had his pocket picked by Tari Eason, and in the ensuing scramble for the ball, Green, shall we say, gave Eason just a little bit more of the business than he needed to. 

It wasn’t much, especially the physical standard of this series, which has turned into something of a cage match. But Green’s foot definitely made contact with Eason’s head, inadvertent as that part seemed, and he absolutely gave Eason’s jersey a tug from the ground before throwing a little bit kick upward.

Again, it was mostly just a competitive play in a highly competitive series, but Green, whose reputation factors into every one of these borderline calls, was playing with fire to be involved in any kind of dustup whatsoever considering he had already been assessed his first technical foul (bogus as it was) five minutes earlier. 

One more tech, and Green was gone. The officials went to the replay monitor, and came back with a strange ruling. Green was hit with a flagrant foul, but not a technical, for apparently using his left leg to “push Eason’s face into the ground.” 

That’s a wild stretch of a description, but whatever. Green got to stay in the game. Had that ruling gone the other way, which it easily could have, this series would likely be headed back to Houston tied 2-2. Instead, the Warriors are up 3-1 after a heart-stopping 109-106 win on Monday.

Warriors’ Brandin Podziemski showing Rockets, rest of NBA that sometimes the best trade is one you don’t make

Green wasn’t alone in his heroics. In fact, he probably won’t get the credit he deserves because he only had six points and two assists while Brandin Podziemski played the game of his life and Jimmy Butler was, well, Jimmy Freaking Butler. 

But make no mistake about it: Green won this game for the Warriors, who outscored the Rockets by 17 points in the 31 minutes Green was on the floor and were outscored by 16 in the 17 minutes he was off. 

That single point was all that separated this game with under 10 seconds to play as Houston’s Alperen Sengun attacked the paint for a potential game-winning shot, but rather than finding the space he’d enjoyed for most of the second half, he ran into Green, who absolutely stoned him into a forced jump hook that never had a chance of going in. Game over. 

After the game, Steve Kerr was asked, on a scale of 1-100, how confident he felt about the Warriors’ chances of getting a stop on the game’s final possession with Green being the primary defender. 

“One hundred,” Kerr said without a second of hesitation. “[Draymond] is the best defender I’ve ever seen in my life, and he rises to the occasion. On top of being an incredible defender, he’s an incredible competitor. … I’ve see it for 11 years. Game on the line, Draymond making a stop, it’s like having Steph Curry take the shot.”

Before we continue waxing poetic about Green, there’s an important detail about that final stop, that didn’t involve Green, that needs to be pointed out. Watch it again, and you’ll see that Houston’s plan was to set a screen on Green with Fred VanVleet with the hope that Gary Payton II, at 6-foot-2, would be forced to switch onto the 6-foot-11 Sengun, who could then attack a mismatch. 

But Payton blew that plan to pieces by holding off VanVleet from even being able to set the screen in the first place. Eventually VanVleet had to peel off and let Sengun go against Green. So if you’re wondering why the Rockets would choose to attack one of the best defenders in history with the game on the line, they didn’t. Payton forced them into it. 

There’s a reason that the Rockets, and Sengun in particular, wanted to switch Green out of that last play. Sure, he’s a generational defender, but in this game, specifically, Green had Sengun’s number. He’s had it all series, really, but go back and look at Sengun’s numbers in Game 4 when Green was on the floor — against when he wasn’t — and you’ll see a clear picture develop. 

When Green went to the bench after that flagrant foul at the 2:44 mark of the second quarter, Sengun had two made baskets on eight attempts. In a 45-second span with Green out, he matched that total going into halftime. 

Now go to the third quarter. When Green was forced to the bench at the 8:06 mark with his fifth foul, Sengun, having added another miss to his ledger, was sitting on four points. With Green out for the rest of the quarter, Sengun rattled off 11 points in six minutes. 

Now go to the fourth quarter. Green remains on the bench for the first four minutes, over which Sengun scores six more points. Green comes back in at the 7:51 mark, and Sengun goes 2 for 6 the rest of the way, including that game-deciding miss forced by Green. 

So let’s do some math. With Green on the court, Sengun scored 10 points on 4-of-16 shooting. With Green off the floor, he scored 21 points on 8-of-12 shooting. Numbers don’t always tell a full story. But these do. Green dominated Sengun, who in turn dominated everyone else the Warriors threw at him. Butler was great, no doubt. Podziemski was out of this world on a night when Stephen Curry was held to 17 points. Buddy Hield made big shots, again, and defended extremely well. Quinten Post becomes more valuable every game. 

But Draymond Green, in the end, won this game for the Warriors. Say what you want about his antics, but he is the guy who stood out front at the trade deadline and said the Warriors are going to win the championship, and so far, despite it being a tough offensive series for him as Houston has made it a point to take away most of his playmaking opportunities, he is doing everything in his power to back up all his talk.