Wiggins-Draymond sequence highlights locked-in Warriors originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
SAN FRANCISCO — The Warriors’ first two shots Wednesday night in their 121-106 Game 5 win against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals to stave off elimination were 3-pointers that helped ignite a Chase Center crowd.
They didn’t come from Steph Curry or Klay Thompson. They came from Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins.
Those served as a sneak peek of monster performances from Green and Wiggins. Offense is secondary for both of them, though, even Wiggins. What really highlighted how locked-in the two were was a defensive masterpiece a little over three minutes into the fourth quarter.
Following an Anthony Davis dunk and Donte DiVincenzo offensive foul, the Lakers could have gained momentum as they did in their Game 4 comeback win. Wiggins had other thoughts.
Instead of waiting for LeBron James and the Lakers to get into their halfcourt offense, Wiggins picked up James well into the other side of the floor. He hounded him. He was aggressive and refused to give him any space.
“I feel like just being aggressive,” Wiggins said when asked about his strategy defending the future Hall of Famer. “If I see him taking the ball out, just pick it up. You know, it’s a long game and we know even if I put myself in a bad spot I trust my teammates behind me to have my back.”
His thinking played out in real time, too.
The 250-pound James (as he’s listed) tried to body Wiggins and get him out of his way. But Wiggins had other plans. He knocked the ball away and got right back into LeBron before trailing him on the way to the basket. There, DiVincenzo and Green were waiting to protect the hoop.
Wiggins’ relentless effort was rewarded with a Draymond block on Anthony Davis before Green led the Warriors’ offense. Watch for yourself.
Green grabbed his own block, quickly got the ball back in his hands and the final result was Gary Payton II going to the free-throw line off a Davis foul. Payton nailed both free throws. He, Green and Wiggins — three defensive stars — finished as the Warriors’ second, third and fourth-leading scorers while combining to go 12 of 13 at the charity stripe.
What could have cut the Lakers’ deficit to nine points wound up being a four-point swing in favor of the Warriors with Davis picking up a foul.
“Oh, he’s just not backing down from the challenge,” Green said of Wiggins. “We all know LeBron and his play-making ability. The strength that he gets downhill with. But Wiggs met that challenge. Like I said, he met strength with strength. With him picking up LeBron like that we just know we have to build a wall behind him. ‘Bron was able to get to the paint, I stepped up and forced a drop off and was able to get back to AD and block the dunk.
“But when you got a guy like that putting his body on the line, giving all the energy and effort that it takes — like, when you’re guarding LeBron up there he’s bumping you. Most guards will just try to dribble and get around. He’s hitting you with a body. That takes a lot of energy. So when you got a guy like that that’s expending that amount of energy, as a teammate you have to be ready to go behind him.
“You can’t allow him to spend that energy and then just give up something easy behind the play. So, for us, we were ready. Once he started picking up, we built the wall and then we just played and were able to make some plays.”
When Wiggins was asked if he could feel fatigue from James at 38 years old, even he admitted it might feel like that one play and then LeBron can throw down a rim-rattling dunk the next possession. The proof is in the numbers.
After scoring 17 points in the first half off a 13-point second quarter, James scored only eight points in the second half — four in each quarter.
“Wiggs, we ask so much of him defensively and in any playoff series he’s going to end up on the opponents’ best wing player,” Steve Kerr said. “So in this series that’s obviously LeBron. And thank God we’ve got Wiggs, because he can play all night, he can pressure up the court, he can guard in the halfcourt and stay in front of people.
“And on that particular play he picked up LeBron really high and then Draymond was behind the play to help him out. It was a big sequence.”
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Offensively, Wiggins finished with 25 points from attacking and also draining two 3-pointers. He didn’t score 20 points through the first four games and was averaging 14.8 points for the series. Green averaged only 6.8 points. By the end of the first quarter, he already passed that mark.
Draymond dropped 20 points for the second time this postseason, both Warriors wins, and they’re now 35-8 all time in the playoffs when he scores 15 or more points.
The tandem set the tone from the start. The Lakers could have had breathing room in the fourth quarter, but Wiggins and Green snatched the air from their two biggest stars and showed what the standard has to be for the Warriors to win two more games and pull off yet another 3-1 comeback.
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