Why Draymond Green's Podcast Isn't The Distraction It Seems

The Warriors fell short in what felt like a winnable Game 3 of the NBA Finals last night. While Steph Curry continued his excellency, as is common for him in the championship, the Warriors couldn’t put together a run of their own to match the Celtics heating up, and their team defense was overall lacking. For the league’s #1 defense, anchored by a perennial Defensive Player of the Year, this shouldn’t be happening.

So why is it? A lot of people are quick to call out forward Draymond Green for his subpar play. And that’s entirely valid, because he’s been playing subpar: He’s going for too many home-runs with his playmaking, not making the simple reads and trying to overcomplicate things. He’s been aggressive with the officials, and seems to be letting his frustrations get the better of him.

Don’t get me wrong, Draymond Green has been far from perfect this series. He may even be a catalyst for some things not working. But to blame it on his podcast is a reach that we need to stop making. And it’s apparent that’s how Green feels, too.

There’s some very obvious rationale for why people keep calling out the podcast. The first is that this situation is the first of its kind: There has never been an NBA player doing a podcast that people actually listen to during the Finals. That probably irks a lot of people because it makes it seem like Dray isn’t fully locked in. But Green makes a good point that he’s the same person in media as he is on the podcast. It’s a bit of a cop-out to call the pod a distraction, especially when we had NBA champions up to much different shenanigans during their championship runs:

This is a pretty good point. We talk about the Chicago Bulls in the 90s as the greatest dynasty ever, the gold standard for what teams should look for in longevity, but we rarely acknowledge that these guys were up to all kinds of stuff. The off-court stuff doesn’t really matter: It’s what happens on the court that counts.

And that’s been the case for the Warriors. Draymond Green’s performance doesn’t actually have anything to do with him taking a podcast break every night, as if the games are not directly giving him content. Without the games, there’s nothing to talk about in the first place. So we go back to the prior argument, which is Draymond’s subpar play just has to do with Draymond not playing well.

The Celtics have been taking advantage of it, too. They aren’t letting the Warriors get clean 4v3 looks by hard-trapping Steph Curry off of screens. Instead, they’ve resorted to playing mostly drop coverages which make it harder for the floor to get spaced out. This has had mixed results, but they’re up 2-1 in the series despite Curry averaging 31 points per game on just under a 62 effective field goal percentage, and that’s largely because they’ve clogged the lane up and made it more difficult for Draymond and Jordan Poole as secondary players to make the big-play reads they often try for.

This mostly falls to Green, as his passing has been a big part of the Warriors’ offense for so many years, but Boston has made it tougher for him to playmake as he usually does, so he needs to adapt to that. On the defensive end, his energy is mostly going towards reacting to calls by the refs and picking fights with Celtics players. They’ve frustrated him and begun to neutralize him slowly on the end of the floor he should have the most impact on, and since they’ve bottled up Jordan Poole and Klay Thompson by reducing their shot quality (by not selling out on Curry fully), the Warriors haven’t been able to get anything going.

None of this is because of a podcast. The Celtics are a well-coached defensive team, and Ime Udoka has done an excellent job in ensuring Steph Curry is the only Warrior who’s leaving an impact on the game by essentially treating him like any other score-first point guard. They’ve eliminated his spacing, and the Warriors are getting punished for it because their strategy is working. So it’s not a matter of Draymond staying locked in, but actually making the necessary adjustments. Green can podcast all he wants, but whether he does or doesn’t isn’t going to matter if he can’t make the necessary changes to be an impact player.

(Photo credit: NBAE / Getty Images)