Draymond Green Hilariously Doubled Down On His Decision To Leave Jaylen Brown Wide Open In Some Sort Of Bizarre Spinzone Attempt
Boston Globe. Getty Images.Even days later, I still cannot believe the Golden State Warriors decided to guard Jaylen Brown like he was Ben Simmons. Easily one of the most outrageous gameplans you will ever see, and as we know, it obviously did not work
Immediately after the game, Draymond's takeaway from that strategy was a bit odd. He tried to make it seem like the plan worked, Jaylen just made his shots. One would argue that would mean the plan did in fact, not work.
Given that it was so close to the end of the game, I wanted to wait until Draymond had time to collect his thoughts and discuss this on his podcast, which you knew was coming. But now having heard that, I'm afraid it looks even worse
Is Draymond Green….just a box score watcher? Is that how all scouting is done in GS? Because anyone who watches Jaylen Brown this season knows that his 34.8% heading into the GS game was not because Jaylen can't make 3s, it's largely due to his degree of difficulty and volume of 3PA.
Why is giving Jaylen Brown "open" 3PA a bad idea? Because heading into that game, Jaylen was shooting 39.4% on open 3PA on the season. The fact that you "weren't worried" that Jaylen was going to hit open 3s when he's nearly a 40% shooter on that exact shot is a bit odd. To help put that into perspective, Steph Curry is shooting 39.6% on these same exact looks! Would anyone in their right mind think of giving Steph Curry 4-6 feet of space on any 3PA??
So right off the bat, the very basis for this approach makes no sense. If you wanted to expand it to his entire career, Jaylen is a 36% shooter, not to mention has a rather large body of work which shows once he sees his first few go in, he starts making them in bunches. He can be streaky like that, so allowing that type of player to catch a rhythm, at home, with his crowd behind him gets crazier and crazier the more you think about it.
Not to mention the fact that since the break, Jaylen had been shooting 42.5% on all of his 3PA! Did nobody in GS even scout this game? There was apparently no talk of
"hey this guy is shooting the hell out of the ball right now, let's make things tough for him"
Which again, is baffling.
The second part that makes this all so confusing is if any team would know Jaylen's offensive weaknesses, it should be GS. They won the Finals in part because they understood that Jaylen struggles offensively at times with constant ball pressure. If you get into his space, he's prone to make mistakes/rush things offensively which leads to turnovers or low percentage shots. So knowing that, Draymond still decided to do the exact opposite, only to double down on this approach 2 days later and say it just came down to Jaylen making shots. Yeah no shit!
It was also crazy to hear Draymond talk about how this game was actually a "free swing" for the Warriors because they had been 3-0 on their trip. Uhhhh, the Warriors are 32-28 and are currently in a battle with the Lakers for the 9/10th seed. Every game matters from here on out, regardless of how many games you've won on a road trip. GS isn't exactly in a position to be punting any game, let alone a big national tv game against the best team in the league.
Based on this reasoning, do we think we'll see Draymond unleash this same strategy tomorrow night against Dame and the Bucks? He's only shooting 34.7% from three on the season, and my guess is no, no they won't.
In reality, Draymond tried to punk Jaylen, and it blew up in his face. Unfortunately for Draymond no amount of bizarre spinzone is going to be able to justify that.
