- Mar 4, 2024
- May 30, 2023
Draymond Green knows the personality of Stephen Curry inside out and so he can understand what drives Curry crazy when it comes to basketball. The duo have been playing with each other for over ten years now. On a podcast, he went into elaborate detail on the one thing in the NBA 2023 finals that made Curry lose his cool.
“Steph Curry, he made me aware about this through the years. There’s guys holding on to the ball at the end of a quarter so they don’t lessen their shooting percentage and I saw a couple of guys do that yesterday,” Green said. “This is the NBA playoffs, man. It’s the NBA Finals! Who cares if your shooting percentage drops a little bit? That thing drives Steph Curry nuts. When we look at a detailed analysis in game three we find a couple of things that went wrong,” Green added.
In the first quarter of Game 1, Reggie Jackson the backup point guard did not manage to put up a shot with 2.9 seconds remaining on the clock. He was deep in the backcourt when an inbound pass from Nikola Jokic came to him. In the fourth quarter, the Denver Nuggets never tried to attempt a single field goal as the outcome was already decided way beforehand. They chose to run down the clock in a mark of respect to the Miami Heat. When there was some time in between two quarters, there were some futile chances taken to shoot the ball as the buzzer sounded.
Stephen Curry according to the state of his mind would have completely lost it in the 2022 NBA Finals. In the first five games of the championship series, Green was 9-32, including 0-11 from behind the arc.
In many instances, the Boston Celtics threw a challenge to shoot by leaving him open. Green often didn’t even bother to take a look at the rim, even though he was not finding making shots the easiest thing. It was not a great time for him as, he had more personal fouls, 24, than made field goals, 9.
The rub of the green went the way of the Golden State Warriors when Jordan Poole stepped up big time. Poole had two game-changing buzzer-beaters in the series, which were very important for the Warriors when they had an unbelievable championship run.