SAN FRANCISCO – When Stephen Curry and Draymond Green saw that Steve Kerr didn’t have their names on the whiteboard as the Golden State Warriors gathered around in the huddle to see the five who would be on the floor to start overtime, it took all 13 years of the trio's time together – every minute and every second of the trio’s 13 golden years of winning and battling together – to trust in what their revered coach was asking them to do.
“Steve said to me and Steph, like, ‘Yo, we sitting y'all the first minute,’” Green said after the Dubs’ 126-119 overtime win over the Orlando Magic. “We're like, ‘Nah, we're good. Like, yo, we all right. That ain't changing nothing. That one minute's not changing anything.’ And he looked at us, and he was like, ‘Ah… we think it's the right thing to do.’ And so, you know, I was telling (Kerr) on the bench. I said (at the) start of overtime, ‘So that's 13 years of trust.’”
Kerr’s thought process was simple: Curry and Green, 38 and 36, respectively, had already played extended minutes up to that point. And as his assistant coach Seth Cooper would point out to Kerr, if the game was tied with five minutes left in regulation, they would give their veteran duo a small break to catch their breath. Perhaps in the old days they would have pushed it no problem, Kerr explained, but they’re not in their heyday anymore.
Thus, in weighing the bigger picture of preserving Curry and Green’s stamina and health over the course of 82 games, Kerr leaned on the currency of trust he has accumulated with his guys, his two future Hall of Famers, to quell their competitive fire for a moment and accept that taking a quick breather was in everyone’s best interest. And even more so, trust that their depth and their reserves could hold down the fort in the meantime. Which they did, and even went a little beyond.
“‘All right, cool, come on, fellas, y'all got it. We believe in y'all,’” Green continued, intimating the sentiment he and Curry poured into Charles Bassey, Brandon Williams, and the rest of the unit that kicked off overtime after they got over their own initial frustrations about not starting in the extra period.
“We want to play, but we believe in y'all. And that group got us a four-point advantage starting overtime. (Charles) Bass wins the tip. We get a bucket. Bass gets a bucket. So they were really good to start that overtime. But I think what it shows is the depth that this team has. Start us on the bench in overtime, and we come up four points. That's what we've been leaning into, and that's what's been good for this team: leaning on the depth and everybody doing what they have to do, taking pride in their role. That's been big for this team.”
And once that unit got Curry and Green the four-point lead, the duo landed the daggers.
His first possession back in the game, Green navigated a broken half-court set with the shot clock winding down to relocate the play to rookie Yaxel Lendeborg, getting him the ball and setting him a screen to free him up for a big 3-pointer. Two possessions later, trailing by one, Curry iso’d a mismatch with Wendell Carter Jr., yanked the ball back for a reverse between the legs to avoid the double team coming, and scooped the ball high above Jamal Cain for the and-1 finish in traffic.
And then the icing on the cake: Curry scooping another layup to the moon and back over Carter in the lane, plus a sideways shimmy shuffle as he danced away from the wreckage, to complete a 41-point outing and give Golden State the overtime victory, their seventh in a row.
Stephen Curry’s conversations with the reserves postgame
After a win like that, in which the reserves collected 44 points off the bench and their young core, Lendeborg and Brandin Podziemski, came up big with 23 points and 15 points, respectively, Curry made sure to highlight their contributions to victory.
“The conversation and the energy (were) more frustration for us, not doubt in the unit that was going out there,” Curry said, not wanting the team to mistake him and Green’s fire as an indictment on them after explaining that it was a weird situation for him to not start overtime as a competitor who wants to play every single minute of crunch time.
Article Continues Below“We wanted to make sure they knew that, because they've been playing well all year, and those 90 seconds they got us a lead, and me and Draymond got to take a quick break. It matters in the big picture of the season. I wanted to echo that after the game because that’s a big deal. They can see our body language on the bench, and you can kind of confuse that as, ‘We can go out there and do it.' But it was more, ‘No, we just want to play.' But it was confidence in their ability to go take care of business.”
That’s the kind of leadership that ignites a locker room. It's the kind of gesture that invigorates a spunk and a confidence, which Curry knows the Warriors are going to need from top to bottom given that they're back to a kind of strength-in-numbers formula that they have to lean on if Curry and Green are to last the gauntlet that is the 82-game regular season.
“It all matters, and it all helps,” Curry said of the reserves being able to buy him and Green minutes this season without much drop-off, also referencing he didn’t have to play the final seven minutes of their 120-100 over the Miami Heat a game ago. “Over the course of 82, you'd hope that we could keep that pattern going while we still win.”
But more than anything, speeches like Curry's, on nights like these and wins like these, help coalesce an identity. Curry’s conversation to the team was notable in Steve Kerr’s eyes, who emphasized the “grit” and “togetherness” the Warriors displayed top to bottom.
“(Curry) mentioned how much trust that he and the vets have in the young guys, and so we've got a good thing going,” Kerr said. “We've got a good vibe. Guys are all competing for each other, playing really hard, but tonight was a good example of (that). We have to tighten up some things. But I'm thrilled with the grit and the togetherness and the way they fought back.”