Barber: Warriors' win against Portland was a Draymond Green game

OAKLAND - The MVPs did their MVP-ish things at Oracle Arena on Sunday. Kevin Durant discarded the final remnants of the leg injury he suffered at the end of February and Stephen Curry scored on a variety of floaters and rainbows. Those two Golden State sharpshooters combined for 61 points. But make no mistake. This was a Draymond game.

When the Warriors got loose for the run that finally shook the persistent Portland Trail Blazers, turning an 88-88 tie to start the fourth quarter into a 103-90 lead less than 5 minutes into the period, Durant and Curry both watched it from the bench.

Draymond Green was on the floor, though. More than anything else, it was his energy, a strange 50-50 blend of joy and rage, that propelled the Warriors to a 121-109 win in Game 1 of this NBA Western Conference first-round playoff series.

“Draymond was amazing,” coach Steve Kerr said afterward. “He made some tremendous defensive plays. He made threes. He rebounded the ball. He had nine assists. I mean, he played a game that I'm not sure anybody else in the league is capable of, honestly. Who else can do what Draymond just did?”

It was a valid question. He'll never get the ink that scorers like Curry and Durant attract, but Green is a singular entity among NBA players. His precise skill set is unique.

The power forward started the fourth quarter by spanking a 3-pointer to break the tie. Shooting is supposed to be Green's weakness, but he connected on 3 of 4 shots beyond the arc against the Trail Blazers. Before that 15-2 run was over, he would draw a foul, steal a pass, set up Klay Thompson with an assist, and block short-to-medium shots by Portland's C.J. McCollum and Evan Turner in the span of a minute.

Those weren't even Green's greatest hits Sunday. In the third quarter, when the game was still perilous, Thompson threw a bad pass into the backcourt, giving Portland a two-on-one break. The two were Damian Lillard and Noah Vonleh. The one was Green. He cut off Lillard's advance, then switched to Vonleh and stuffed the 6-foot-9 forward's dunk attempt.

“When you block it at the rim, it's a little different because that's one of those plays where you're within a half-inch to a centimeter of being dunked on,” Green mused. “So when you actually come up with the block, you know, it's a bit more excitement. When you're coming across and you get a swat, that's usually weakside. … But at the rim it's mano a mano, man against man. Who is going to win the battle?”

Sunday, Green won most of them.

Later in the fourth quarter, with Portland starting to cut into the Warriors' lead again, Lillard raced past Durant to the basket. Green cut over to help and rejected the shot maybe three feet from the rim. Lillard went to the floor and lay there a moment. Green stood and stared at him, practically daring the prolific point guard to get up and try again.

Green wasn't done. With 2:44 left he drove to the basket, drew a foul against the Trail Blazers' Maurice Harkless and banked the shot home anyway. Green stood at the baseline and flexed for the crowd, the sort of gesture that make opposing fans despise him as much as the people here love him.

Green's final stat line looked like this: 19 points, 12 rebounds, nine assists, five blocks and three steals. According to the Warriors, he was the first player to hit such thresholds in a playoff game since the NBA began charting blocks and steals in 1973-74.

They were top-shelf numbers. As always, they didn't tell the full story of Green's afternoon.

His energy and versatility on the defensive end kept the Warriors in the game while McCollum and Lillard were going nuts in the first half. And his intensity provided fuel for a team that entered the series, and the entire postseason, as a heavy favorite.

If the fourth quarter had gone differently, Kerr would have been paintballed with questions about keeping his two most valuable players, Curry and Durant, on the sidelines to begin the fourth quarter. Durant frequently starts the second and fourth periods at the 4 position, rather than Green. But Kerr showed that he still has a keen sense of his team's chemistry.

“That unit … that was out there to start the fourth quarter, with D(avid) West, Draymond, Klay, Andre (Iguodala) and Ian (Clark), they hang their hats on the defensive end to try to create momentum, and they did that,” Curry said. “Got the crowd into the it and we were off to the races the rest of the quarter.”

“We had 88 points at the end of the third quarter, but the problem was they had 88 points,” Green said. “So we knew we had to come out and get stops if we were ever going to pull away in that game.”

Green plays basketball on a knife's edge of intensity. When he goes too far, the results can be disastrous for Golden State. That was the case a year ago, when he picked up three flagrant fouls during the 2016 postseason. The last of the three resulted in a one-game suspension against the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, which in turn resulted in a Cleveland comeback that devastated the Warriors and their followers.

When Green can tiptoe that edge and channel his emotions positively, though, he provides a spark that might otherwise be lacking on this team. Durant, Curry and Thompson all play with muffled intensity. You know that deep down inside they are viciously competitive. Green is the only one among them who wears it on his sleeve. It's there for teammates, opponents and paying customers to see, and it can be contagious.

“I think that team depends on him to be that dog out there,” Lillard said.

The trash talk can be contagious, too.

Some NBA players yammer at the opposition out of calculation. They're trying to throw a guy off his concentration or draw him into bad decisions. Green does it reflexively. He seems incapable of shutting his trap on the court.

“I don't even talk trash, and he was saying so much out there that I had a whole lot to say tonight,” Lillard noted.

The Trail Blazers did not accept the abuse passively. With Golden State up 103-90 and with 6:36 remaining, Green flew to the rim for a flying dunk. You can picture what was going through his head. He had sparked a game-changing run for the Warriors. Now he was about to set fire to the crowd and knock the Blazers out cold with a thundering jam. Except he came up short, and the ball clanged off the rim.

As Green began to jog upcourt, you could see McCollum engaging him.

“Yeah, he told me I need to do more calf raises,” Green said, smiling.

Finally, someone had exposed a hole in Draymond Green's game.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.