Building on a Defensive-Player-of-the-Year-worthy season, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green has tapped into the individual intricacies that it takes to guard some of the best players in the league. LeBron James is perhaps the most well-rounded specimen the league has seen in the last two decades, but Green has found ways to defend even the deadliest of threats on the court, even more so when it comes to the last stretch of the game.
“It's the most predictable time of the game,” Green told Bleacher Report's Ric Bucher, who was a former Warriors sideline reporter. “You know who a team wants to go to, and you know that guy is trying to go score. During the course of the game, a player is looking to pass, screen, he's diving and rolling or slipping the screen, but at the end of the game he's trying to score, that's it. He's got to go score or the game is over.”
The approach certainly changes for James, given that the Cleveland Cavaliers are built around him and tailored to maximize his full array of offensive skills.
“With LeBron, obviously it's different because he does so much. It's about mixing it up,” Green said. “You can't always pick LeBron up and pressure him, but you can't always sit back. You've got to do both.”
“So with him, as a defender, one possession you're playing him one way, the next possession you're playing him a completely different way, and you just try to keep him off-balance as much as you can. Give him a steady diet of one thing, he'll pick that s*** apart. He's one of the smartest players to ever play the game.”
While Green has held off on the specifics of his strategy, it's likely he's had plenty of games' worth of experience and tape to go back to within the past three years. But as the undersized forward said, the first part in defending him is knowing that James can change it up just as often as he can, making the individual chess match just that much more fun to watch.
If everything goes according to experts' predictions, it won't be long before the two meet in the NBA Finals for a third straight year and Green can put his secrets to work in a best-of-seven series.
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