Draymond Green went viral for all the right reasons on Saturday night.
The Warriors’ do-it-all forward was all over the place in Golden State’s 110-99 Game 3 win over the Trail Blazers. He scored 20 points, grabbed 13 rebounds, dished 12 assists, and swiped four steals.
His leadership, however, stole the show. After the win, Green turned to the Warriors’ video coordinator for putting him in the right mindset.
“James Laughlin, our video coordinator, he came up to me right before the series started and he said, ‘Hey’ he said, ‘You’ve helped me a lot in growing since I’ve been here. And this series, we’re going to need our bench a lot and it’s important that you stick with them and continue to give them confidence,'” Green said.
Draymond credits the Warriors video coordinator for inspiring him to be a leader in the WCF pic.twitter.com/EOGvcG3xFN
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 19, 2019
When Warriors backup center Jordan Bell missed a wide-open dunk, Green was right there to pick his teammate up.
“He miss a shot tonight? Did he? I did. He did, too. It’s OK. Keep it moving,” Green was heard saying on the ESPN broadcast. “It’s OK. You missed a shot. All of us have. Nobody’s perfect.”
Bell followed up the encouragement with a huge dunk two minutes later.
That’s more like it JB 😤
pic.twitter.com/JUvMfKQDsl— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) May 19, 2019
“For a second, I caught myself, like, man, we could have cut that to six, and then we fouled them. Just like that, it just came upon me to stick with him [Bell] and give him some confidence, and sure enough, he had a dunk the next play and he had a block,” Green said.
“So I think that was an important moment, and it’s — you know, we always talk about the strength in numbers. That’s coming from a video coordinator. Usually, don’t get that from a video coordinator but that paid dividends for us tonight.”
[RELATED: New, focused Draymond putting his stamp on West finals]
The Warriors are getting the best version in every way possible of Green right now. He’s not Steph Curry. He’s not Kevin Durant. He’s not Klay Thompson. But he’s the catalyst that gets the train rolling, and clearly will be one of the biggest keys to the Warriors three-peating.