Andrew Bogut Back With the Golden State Warriors
Click here if you're unable to view the photo gallery on your mobile device.
LOS ANGELES — Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green make for an unlikely duo.
They literally grew up on opposite sides of the world and their paths to the NBA and the Warriors were near opposite, too.
But the two have nevertheless become basketball soulmates; bound by enviable smarts, unrelenting competitiveness, and a true lack of care of what anyone thinks about them.
And when the two are on the defensive side of the court, you can see — and hear — the strength of that bond.
The NBA's broadcast partners put microphones in huddles during timeouts, but they are not allowed to broadcast any talk of strategy. As such, you'll hear coaches imploring their teams to "communicate" on defense so often that it comes across as an empty trope, on par with "play hard" and "you gotta want it"
But the truth is that communication is absolutely vital to playing good defense in this increasingly perimeter-focused, positionless era of basketball, where picks and screening actions are constant and switching assignments have become the norm.
Without communication, a five-man unit will be scrambled in the blink of an eye.
But with Green and now, once again, Bogut in the fold, the Warriors have two of the best on-court communicators in the game.
"Coaches always tell players on defense that you have to yell it out. [But] nobody wants to yell it out — you feel kind of self-conscious," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said Saturday.
"Bogut doesn't care. He yells. You watch a game and you're near the court, you can hear him constantly. Whatever the coverage is, he's yelling it. Draymond does the same thing. To have them as a tandem — both barking — is great."
"I think it can be a little bit intimidating for the offense. When the defense is playing really well and communicating really loudly, it's kind of annoying. It works."
Anyone who watches a basketball game world knows that Green's mouth rarely stops running. And while his ability to talk trash has certainly knocked a few opponents off their game, the Warriors forward credits Bogut with teaching him how to channel that gift of gab into something more helpful to his team.
In fact, while Green might be the best defender on the planet, he is adamant that he wouldn't have reached this level without Bogut taking him under his wing.
"I wouldn't be half the defender I am without Andrew Bogut. He taught me so much about defense that I owe all my success to him defensively," Green told Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell in an ESPN interview last June.
"The first day I got here, he kind of showed me how you can guard the post in the NBA," Draymond told reporters last month. "I had no clue. Leaving college, you kind of got to guard the post with your chest, which is ridiculous. In the NBA, you get torched guarding the post with your chest.
"Most importantly, (he taught me) how to communicate on that side of the ball."
With Green proving to be a quick study and Bogut at the peak of his rim-protecting powers, the duo anchored a Warriors defense that was the backbone of their stunning 2015 championship. The next year, they won 73 regular-season games and were up 3-1 in the NBA Finals, before Green was suspended for Game 5 and Bogut injured his knee in the contest, knocking him out of the rest of the series.
Weeks later, Warriors traded Bogut to Dallas summer as a way to clear salary for Kevin Durant's arrival.
Green said that he could have never imagined getting Bogut back onto the Warriors, but with the Warriors struggling at center earlier this season, he reached out to Bogut to gauge his interest in coming back to the NBA and then he pounded the table for him with the Golden State front office.
The NBA's loudest duo re-formed in late March, as Bogut was called in to start for the Warriors in a game in San Antonio. He was yet to practice with his new/old team, but you would have never been able to guess it — he was correctly calling out defensive coverages from the first possession onwards.
"That will go down in my memory as one of the really outstanding things I've witnessed in basketball," Ron Adams, 71, said Saturday.
Green and Bogut didn't play together much in the regular season, but in 264 possessions together on the court, the Warriors posted a defensive rating of 103. In 23 minutes this postseason, that rating is 96.
If that number holds, it will no doubt be the top mark in the NBA Playoffs — a spot the Warriors have held in all three of their prior title campaigns (and didn't hold in 2016).
Yes, the symbiosis is strong and their collective barking is helping fortify a Warriors' defense that was a question mark heading into the playoffs.
"It's a comforting feeling when you have someone behind you talking," Green said last month. "When you can talk to someone and you figure things out and you're on the same page."
But ironically, for all of the yelling they do on the court, they don't often need to bark out orders to each other.
"He and myself have a great relationship where you don't even have to say anything, just read and react," Bogut said. "He's got a high basketball IQ, and I like to think I do as well. It comes natural."
Andrew Bogut Back With the Golden State Warriors
Source: https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2019/04/21/golden-state-warriors-nba-playoffs-2019-los-angeles-clippers-la-draymond-green-andrew-bogut-start-time-channel/
0 Response to "Andrew Bogut Back With the Golden State Warriors"
Post a Comment