Dray on Warriors-Nuggets Game 5, how to defend Jokic & Ja Morant's award | The Draymond Green Show

What's up everybody? It's Draymond Green. Make sure you subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel below so you don't miss any more of this great content going forward. I know everybody thought, Draymond's gonna come on now you're doing it after a loss. It's so much easier to do it after a win. The injury's still the same. It don't waver. I'm still here. We still doing it. The Denver Nuggets, they did exactly what I expected them to do. They came out, they played hard. No one wants to get swept, especially not on their home floor. They have the MVP of the NBA. Not a soft guy by any stretch of the imagination. Does you, you don't become the Nikola Jokic that we know today if you're a guy that just comes out and lay down when it's time to get swept and you were once the 46th pick, 47th pick. You don't become that guy if you are someone that just goes and lay down. Mike Malone, who was once my assistant coach, is their head coach. I know what type of fighter Mike Malone is. We never, we didn't expect them to come out and lay down. And I thought we came out, I thought we were ready to play. But I also, and saying that, I think we needed to raise our physicality level a little bit more early on in the game. I think we found it as the game went on, but we needed to raise that a little earlier in the game, especially when you're trying to close out a team. I thought for us, that was a very good situation for us to be in, whether we won or lost it. Moving forward, we, we can learn from that experience. The one thing I've always talked about is our team, we still have a very young team, a very inexperienced team when it comes to playoff basketball outside of the 5 that's won a championship. And so for us, I'm not mad at that at all. And you know, I like the way the Nuggets came out. I respect that. But now, you know, we're back at home. We did what we were supposed to do. When you go on the road, the objective is to win one of the two. Mm-hmm. We won one of the two. We tried to get greedy and go in there and get both of 'em. It didn't work. Now we come back home, game 5, settle back in, get back to the game plan. We turned the ball over 17 times in game 4. Most turnovers we done had in any game this series. That fuels their break. That gets all those other guys going. Then all of a sudden you have a Monte Morris with 24 points. You have an Aaron Gordon, with 21 points. You have Bones Hyland, I think, with 15 points or somewhere around there. And so you allow all of those guys to get off by turning the ball over. A lot like Brooklyn, we were playing against a set defense all night with all the fouling. They went to the foul line 37 times. It's hard to beat a team, you're turning the ball over, so you can't get your defense set and they're getting runouts, they're getting open shots in transition. And then when you do get a chance to play them in a half court or you're trying to get back in transition, they shoot 37 free throws. That means at least 19 to 20 times in that game right there off the free throws alone, you're playing against a set defense. You know, what are you, 80, 90 possessions? Yeah. So there's more than 30% of your possessions against a set defense automatically because you're coming off a free throw situation. So for us, I think it's very simple. Get back to not turn the ball over, get back to defending without fouling. That falls on me. Game 3, I had 5 fouls. I was able to make the play, but game 4, I had 6 fouls. So I can't continue to get in that same foul trouble as well. As the leader on that side of the floor for my squad, if I'm going to get in foul trouble, if that's the tone, that I'm going to set, then you have to expect that guys are gonna follow that. You gotta take the good with the bad as a leader. You can't just take the good and say, "Oh man, our defense was great. It was great because of these reasons and I'm right in the middle of that." And not say, "Our defense, we fouled a lot. We didn't cover the things that we need to cover and our defense was bad, but I'm not in the middle of that." No, I'm right in the middle of all of that. So I have to do a better job of defending without fouling. The Dubs have to do a better job as a whole of defending without fouling. And we, when we do that on Wednesday, I have no doubt in my mind that we go ahead, we take game 5 and we move on to the next series. But as I said, closeout games are tough. So it's on us to lock in. It's on us to take the experience that we learned from game 4, bring that to game 5 and finish the job. That's what's important. You get outta this series, you don't look ahead and say, all right, we're going into game 5. It's automatically done. No, it's not. Finish the job, get back to the game plan. We get back to the game plan, I don't have any doubt in my mind that we'll close the series out. Oh, also, also heard a lot from a lot of different people, some close to me, some on Twitter, about the Aaron Gordon double tech or whatnot in the first quarter. Ah, you know, I don't make much of double tech situations, honestly. In most cases, I totally disagree with double techs because usually there's someone that did something that required a reaction from someone. And once the reaction comes, then it's like, oh, we're gonna give both of them tech. And it's like, no, make the tough call and call the first tech that should be called. Not, oh, well this, I just watched this guy do something to him and he reacted. So I'm gonna give him a tech for reacting. Like, come on, man. We're human beings. You're going to have reactions to things. And I feel like if an official see certain things happen, like, and you saw what led to that, then you call, you know, you call the tech. Like, don't double tech. Now in our situation, it was totally different. We were both talking back and forth. We probably deserved a double tech. But in a lot of those situations, and more so throughout the regular season, I seen a bunch of them. I really disagree with the double tech, but I don't make much of the Aaron Gordon thing that happened in the first quarter. Like, small fruit. Gotta keep going. You can't like, "Oh man, we got into it in the first quarter. I'm gonna hold on to that." Like, that's, keep it pushing. That's the least of my worries. Move forward. I ain't tripping on that at all. And the moment we've all been waiting for, my rant. —on Most Improved Player of the— the Most Improved Player of the Year in the NBA. The award that the name needs to be changed on. Number one, I wanna say congratulations to Ja Morant. I don't— I'm always happy to see a young Black man have success. When you're talking Most Improved Player, you get that award because you worked hard. And so I don't ever want to take away or dim the light on the work that he's put in. I think the point I've been making the entire time is maybe, maybe I just may be a better talent evaluator, general managers than basketball player. Because I myself personally thought Ja Morant was absolutely incredible last year. And so that's kind of been my whole thing on him winning the Most Improved Player Award. I think Ja Morant maybe have felt kind of the same way, which is why he went and dropped that award off, or had it dropped off at Desmond Bane's house. Now that's him giving, you know, giving an award to his, one of his teammates that was in the, in the running for the award. Listen, I actually agree Desmond Bane probably should be in the top 3 voting for most improved player because he improved a a bunch to, from his rookie year to this year and the player that he's become and the importance that he has on that team. And so I'm not going to rant about this most improved player thing again, because as I said, Ja Morant won the award. I don't want to take anything away from him. But what I will say is there were 4 voters that voted Ja Morant. 4. Third place in most improved player. I respect those 4 voters' opinion and their judgment on the actual award way more than everyone that voted him first place. Some— those 4 people that voted him in third place are actually more accurate and spot on. Well, like, you know, you see all the work Ja Morant put in and you know how good Ja Morant was. And it's like, All right, there's 4 people that's like, I wanna mention Ja Morant in this category. But then they come to their senses and they're like, but he was so good last year that I really can't put him in first place. But I do wanna mention and honor the work that he's put in. So yeah, we gonna like 4 third place votes. Those third place votes has to be the more accurate numbers on Ja Morant. And like I said, in judging and looking from afar, Ja Morant kind of felt the same way. Like, let me go take this to Desmond Bane. 'Cause that, I don't know. Like nonetheless, kudos and congratulations to Ja Morant. That's incredible. You get acknowledged for your work. I can't take nothing away from him. But the NBA, y'all gotta do something about it. It has to happen. The voting process, it needs scratched again. Go show me anywhere else in the world where someone who's like, "Oh, I'mma give my opinion on this," is going to decide who makes the money and how that works out and who wins these awards. Ah, put a committee together, NBA. You know, just like the competition. Put some type of committee of coaches and general managers. Put maybe a couple media members. Put some committee together and let's get these awards voted on. And let's also define— Yeah. What the criteria is for these awards. Come on now, NBA. I'm sick of asking. We need this done. Let's get it done, baby. We need it. Thank you.