Dray's Warriors-Kings Game 1 breakdown, reaction to De'Aaron Fox & Malik Monk | 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. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Draymond Green Show. We are back with our post-game podcast. And of course everyone's gonna say, you lost, you shouldn't be podcasting. Like they said all last year during the finals. And we won. So let's just not start that. Let's just be happy. Be cool, chill, enjoy the episode or not. If you don't wanna listen, don't listen. But like really don't wanna hear that this year because you kind of can't stand on that this year because we won finals with me doing it. In saying that, very frustrating loss today. I thought we did enough to win the game and yet I think we have a whole nother level of things, a level to reach and things that we can do, you know, to, kind of counter their attack, you know, and we'll talk about a little bit of that. Let's get right into it though. The Dubs lost the game 126-123. If I'm being quite honest, you know, to have Steph with a shot to tie the game and go to overtime, I didn't think we played great. I thought we played pretty good, but I think there's a lot of things we can do better. And so just with that, No, you gotta feel decent about the game and about where we can go. Obviously we don't do moral victories, so I'm not gonna sit here and say we feel good about that. Like, fuck no. Like we lost the game, we're down 0-1, and you gotta figure out a way to go get game 2. Now in saying that, this is the playoffs and you gotta win one on the road, whether that's game 1, 2, 5, or 7, don't really matter. You'd rather it be sooner rather than later, but We know that, we understand that, and we not folding to that. De'Aaron Fox finished the game with 38 and 5 assists. We definitely have to do better on Fox. You know, he had 5 threes, and that wasn't really expected, but he shot the ball well. I remember having him on the show, and he was saying like he needed to take the shot more. And you know, he took 'em tonight, he knocked 'em down. You know, you gotta live with that. You gotta give up something. You know, he hit the shots tonight. You know, next game you wanna make it a little tougher on him if you can. But in making a game plan, there are things that you'll live with and things that you want. And what you can't live with is De'Aaron Fox being a one-man fast break. You can't live with him getting into the paint every possession. Those are tough things to deal with. Malik Monk had a game off the bench, 32 points. Mm-hmm. De'Aaron Fox may get 38 points and you know, he's obviously capable, but more than capable, even if he didn't do it tonight of getting 38 points. And, but you can't give up 32 to Malik Monk off the bench. Now Malik's an incredible player. You know, he's 2 for 4 from the 3. So it wasn't 3-point line, but he got downhill and put a lot of pressure on our defense. He got shot 14 free throws and he was 14 of 14 from the line. You might've saw me talking to him those last couple free throws. Like, man, you owe us one. Like, you know, you passed your percentage now. I think the numbers gotta play out. You owe us one. He knocked them down. But he had a big game. Trey Lyles also had a big game off the bench. Trey Lyles had 17 points off the bench. So there it is right there. Like, you give up 49 points off the bench to two guys. It's hard to overcome that. 17 offensive rebounds. So we gotta, You know, their offense, when nobody had nothing going, what kept them in the game was the offensive rebounds. And you know, if you in a situation like that, when you're on the other side of it, you're watching that game or you're in that game and you're like, yo, we're not playing well and we're right here. But how do you get right there? Like I said, for them it was the offensive rebound. So that's something that we have to clean up. We know we're a team capable of rebounding. When we lock in on that,— And it's gonna be a 5-man effort. They're crashing the boards from the corner, from the top, they're sending everybody to the glass. So it's gonna be a 5-man effort cleaning up the boards. If they're long rebounds, we have to make sure we're coming back in and getting those rebounds. But we didn't do a good job of that tonight. And ultimately it ended up costing us the game. So those are a couple things that we could have done better. Steph finished with 30. He started to get it going there after that first quarter and you can kinda see him, you know, figuring out his spots and reading the defense and seeing, you know, figuring their coverages out. And once he figured them out, he got going. Wiggins, Wiggins was 17 points off the bench in 28 minutes. We're a different team when Wigs is here. We're a different team when we got Wigs out there. And you know, first game back, he was 1 for 8 from the 3 with some shots that he normally will hit. And I don't doubt that he's going to hit those. You know, the first game back, you don't have your legs under you, you know, and to come back in that intense-ass game, you know, kudos to Wiggs. We need him. We're gonna need him to continue to get better and better and at a rapid pace, and I have no doubt he will. Had been looking great in the scrimmages, so it wasn't a shocker to me that he came out getting to it. Says a lot about him. The things that he was at home dealing with, which is out there now, to keep himself in shape and come back for this team, ready to go for this run is huge. And that's something that we can build on. So definitely expecting Wiggs to stay aggressive. What I loved is that he was taking those shots. Regardless if the threes went in or not, he kept taking them. Had one in the corner to put us up 2 late in the game, living with that shot. So, Great to have Wiggs back. And like I said, he'll continue to get better defensively as well. Although he was all over the court on that end, getting some, creating some loose balls and, you know, came up with some rebounds. I like it. I like it. I also, now in saying that, I also didn't think we played great. I think there were a lot of things that we could clean up on both sides of the ball. They did a good job of throwing different defenses out there. And when they threw those defenses out there, I thought we got good looks. We just missed them. And you know, with the shooters that we have, I trust that those looks are gonna go in. So we just gotta keep doing what we're doing, moving the basketball, you know, and you know, we gave up 126 points. Obviously that's a team who's played great offensively all year. But again, I think, you know, a huge part of that were the offensive rebounds to allow those guys to get going. Then once they get going, it's tough. So I think we found some things in this game that we can build up on, that we will build up on. I don't think we'll give up 49 points to 2 players off the bench, and that'll be huge for us. You know, so looking forward to Monday's game, you know, coming out and getting a win and going back home 1-1 and with home court advantage. That'll be big for us. We've obviously did a great job of taking care of home court all year, so If we can go back 1-1, that'll be huge. That'll be huge. And I have no doubt in my mind, we'll make adjustments and we'll do that. So looking forward to it. Monday will be fun. It was a very fun day just overall. Like you feel that energy, man. That was a great environment, by the way, to play in that environment. That's a team, an organization, a city that has not seen postseason basketball in 16 years. And they were ready and it was loud and man, just fun. Like, miss that atmosphere. Very fun atmosphere to play in. They fans brought it. They were good. But I thought we handled that well. We stayed right there in the game and ultimately we didn't come out the win. So, speaking of fun, there were also other games that went on today. The Knicks beat the Cavaliers 101 to 99. Yeah. To 97. Jalen Brunson finished with 27 after only having 6 points in the first half. I think it's gonna be, I saw early on, I didn't get to watch all of the game, but I saw early on in that second half that the Knicks were guarding Jalen Brunson with, I mean, excuse me, the Cavs were guarding Jalen Brunson with Darius Garland. And I must say, DG shocked me. I didn't realize DG had gotten that strong. Jalen wasn't just bullying when I watched, but he hit a couple turnaround jump shots. Now, quite frankly, if you're not giving up something straight to the rim, you live with the turnaround jump shot. You know, Jalen, he's left-handed, so he likes to turn over the left shoulder with the fade. However, that is a Jalen Brunson shot. Like, he lives with that shot. He's oftentimes trying to get to that shot. So as much as you like, you live with it, It's tough when that's exactly what he's trying to get to. And usually, you know, like we guarded him last year when we played him with the Mavs. I guarded him because you know, he's trying to get to the mid-range. And so it'll be interesting to see what they'll do to combat that because Jalen Brunson is a problem. He's been a problem all year, you know, And he's, that's not going anywhere. So it'll be interesting to see what they'll do with their matchups. They had a tough time with Okoro on the floor, who's one of their best wing defenders. Had to go Chetty Osman because they just clogged the floor up and he didn't make a shot. So we know the Cavs' strength is in their length, in their size. Donovan Mitchell had a big game, 38, 8, and 5. Mm-hmm. Donovan Mitchell is one of the top 5 players in scoring average in NBA history when it comes to the playoffs. So, you know, to see him have another big game, you're not surprised, but you'd also like to see that with a win, especially holding them to 101 points. And so yeah, that was a good game. I think that's gonna be a good series. I can see that series going 6 or 7 because it's gonna be a good series. And I also expect the Cavs to come out and get the next game. It's tough, especially when you can't play your best wing defender. It gets tough. So we'll, like I said, we'll see what their adjustments are gonna be as far as that matchup goes. Julius Randle's first game back, 19, 10, and 4. And Josh Hart was off the, was great off the bench. He ended up finishing that game with 17 and 10. And also I did see him hit that huge 3 from the top of the key. After the Cavs took the lead. And that was a big 3. And again, there are things that you'll live with and things that you want. Josh Hart hits a big 3, you gotta live with that. Jalen Brunson or Julius hit the 3, you hoping you do something to key on those guys and take it away. Josh Hart hits it, you gotta live with it. Big shot by Josh Hart, big game by Josh Hart. Huge pickup, mid-season acquisition for the Knicks. He came through for 'em today. It was great. The Celtics, Celtics was up 30 at halftime. I did see that. Jackson's over here throwing up gang signs or something because as you all know, he's happy about the Celtics. I hear there's some worry, Jackson, about the Celtics. Jalen, Jalen Brown cut his finger and it reopened.— he didn't look like he was affected by much with the game he had, scoring 29 points and 12 rebounds, and JT 25 and 11. But that's something to watch. That's something to watch. You keep cutting that finger back open, it starts to worry. I saw he said his grip was a worry. So I think we need to watch that. But they handled that pretty easily. Draymond Green didn't shoot well. DeJounte had 24, but he was 0 for 6 or 0 for 8 from the 3. Expect both of those guys to play better and expect Atlanta to put up another fight. I mean, a better fight. You know, does that mean they win even a game? I don't know. But I do expect those two guys to play well. And last but not least, 76ers versus the Nets. James Harden got off. James Harden hit threes. I did watch some of this game. I saw the Nets sending a double team at Joel Embiid no matter where he caught the ball. And the 76ers combated that by hitting 21 threes. And that's what you'd hope when they're sending a double team at Embiid every play because that is what they're gonna do. They're gonna double Embiid. They don't want him to beat them. They're gonna make other guys hit shots. Those guys hit shots today. We'll have to see if they can do that for the rest of the series. If Jock will stick with his game plan or he'll change it. Me personally, I think you gotta keep making those guys hit shots because one thing, Joel gonna score. So you gotta live with something and you know you're not living with Joel doing what Joel does. There's not one person on the Nets team that can stop Joel Embiid. It's not really many people in the league, if any, that can stop Joel Embiid, but it's definitely not one on the Nets team. So. Yeah. Sure, they'll keep sending that double and you gotta fly around and try to make those guys miss those threes. They hit 'em tonight. We'll see if they can do it again. But yeah, good first day of basketball. I'm looking forward to getting back to the drawing board tomorrow, making our adjustments. We've been great at that over the years. I have no doubt that we'll continue to be great at that. And then also enjoying the off day and some NBA basketball and just staying— Yeah. It's just staying in it, man. You gotta feel this. You gotta stay in the moment. And when you're watching basketball, you can feel that. You pick up on things and enjoy it. Oh, and by the way, we are up for a Webby Award. Make sure you go to www.webbyawards.com and you vote. You go to sports, you go to podcasts, You go down to General Series and then you go to Sports and then you vote for The Draymond Green Show. Need all of our listeners to go out there and vote. You can only vote once. So I don't need you to vote every day, but I do need you to go vote once. Be incredible to win. Thank you all. I love you all. I appreciate the support, your listens, your downloads. They never go unnoticed. I do understand that we have the best fan base when it comes to podcasts, just like Dub Nation. Yeah. Till next time, it's a wrap from this episode of the Draymond Green Show. Peace. 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.