The Golden State Warriors won't have the services of Draymond Green at Chase Center for Friday's in-season tournament battle with the San Antonio Spurs. The next time they take the floor after a rare four-day, midseason break, though, Green will be back on the floor, his five-game suspension for putting Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert in a chokehold finally fulfilled.
Steve Kerr discussed Green's status before Friday's game, noting Golden State's de facto defensive captain and emotional leader is expected to play his normal minutes load during Tuesday's road tilt with the Sacramento Kings.
“He's been working hard with Rick. He travelled to Phoenix with us, played 3-on-3, I believe he scrimmaged today—I'm not positive about that,” Kerr said of Draymond, per Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “But he's been really putting a ton of work in, so hopefully he'll be fine and ready to play a lot of minutes on Tuesday.”
Warriors struggled during Draymond Green's suspension
The Warriors haven't been the same team as Green has faced the consequences of his dangerous chokehold on Gobert. They're 1-3 without him entering Friday's matchup versus San Antonio and also fell to the Timberwolves on Nov. 14 after Green—as well as Klay Thompson and Jaden McDaniels—was ejected less than two minutes into the first quarter.
Golden State's offense has been inconsistent at best of late, largely the result of an inability to find reliable secondary scoring and creation behind Stephen Curry. But defense has been the bigger recent issue, no surprise given the immense impact Green makes on that side of the ball as well as quality of the Warriors' competition. The Oklahoma City Thunder and Phoenix Suns, for instance, own two of the most dynamic offenses in basketball with wildly disparate attacks, which a singular all-court defender like Green is uniquely suited to help keep in check.
The Dubs' defensive rating in the last five games is 118.8, per NBA.com/stats, barely better than the rebuilding Spurs' 26th-ranked season-long mark. Their issues on that end have been widespread, but Kerr believes the most significant is a renewed propensity for fouling—a problem he hopes Green's return can remedy.
“I think the fouling, that was the No. 1 goal defensively coming into the season is to cut back on our fouling, keep our opponents off the foul line as best we could. I haven't looked at the stats lately in terms of our league ranking, but it's not good. We're fouling like crazy,” Kerr said. “We've gotten undisciplined the last couple weeks. We're fouling too much. Our opponents are not only getting free points but setting up their defense, makes it harder to score on the other end. That's to me the No. 1 issue.”
Golden State's opponent free-throw rate since Green was ejected against Minnesota is .308, just a hair above its bottom-four-ranked overall number. The Warriors haven't accomplished the preseason goal of cutting back on fouling in 2023-24, obviously, but expect them to better in that regard upon Green's return in Sacramento. Not only is he fully capable of switching across five positions, allowing the defense to avoid getting into rotation, but there's also no help defender who puts out more fires with innate anticipation and constant communication than Green.
Green and the Dubs tip off against the Kings at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday night.
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