SAN FRANCISCO — Draymond Green doesn’t stop talking. Even when facing defeat, the legendary competitor can be heard voicing his displeasure with the officials or hurling an expletive at the opposition.
But Green watched his words while he stood at the end of the bench in the final moments of Golden State’s home game against OKC on Tuesday, and it wasn’t because his team was about to suffer a 124-112 loss. It was because his 8-year-old son, Draymond Jr., was standing by his side.
The younger Draymond handed out towels and boosted team morale down the stretch of the game, and he had a request.
“Can you introduce me to Chet Holmgren?” he asked his father once the final buzzer sounded.
Holmgren, fresh off of a 21-point performance, obliged. They met near halfcourt, where Holmgren reached down to give Green’s son a fist bump.
“I went and introduced him to Chet, and Chet was nice,” Green said. “I really appreciate that. Any time you give them those experiences that quite honestly money can’t buy, I’m always forever grateful.”
It’s fitting, considering the Warriors have made memories for young hoopers throughout the past decade.
For years, Golden State was the gold standard of the NBA. The team with unselfish stars. The team that played freely on the surface but was rooted in discipline. The team kids would ban their friends from selecting in NBA 2K because it was too overpowered.
Nowadays, that team is OKC. With its win on Tuesday, the reigning NBA champion became just the fourth team in league history to start a season 21-1 or better. It’s the first one to do so since the 2015-16 Warriors, who ultimately posted the best regular-season record of all-time (73-9).
“It’s pretty clear as day they changed basketball forever,” Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said of the Warriors. “They changed the way the game is played in terms of small ball, the shooting, the pace and the type of actions. All of it. They not only won, they dominated and reinvented the wheel, which is something not a lot of people get to say they’ve done.
“They’ve done things we all hope and dream to do with the game, and hopefully we do one day.”
Jalen Williams has plenty of Warriors memories.
He was a sophomore at Santa Clara in 2020-21, a season that was complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Broncos spent most of it living out of the Hotel Paradox in nearby Santa Cruz due restrictions back in their county, and Williams passed the time by watching the Warriors from his room.
Williams also held his pre-draft workouts in the area in 2022. And he would sometimes make the trip to marvel at Golden State’s recently-built $1.4 billion Chase Center.
Golden State won a championship that year, marking its fourth title in an eight-year window. And while Williams witnessed the Warriors’ greatness from the outside looking in back then, he was inside the building Tuesday. The 24-year-old star recorded 22 points and six assists.
Stephen Curry didn’t play due to a right quadriceps contusion, but Green did. And head coach Steve Kerr called out plays from the sideline. Those three ran laps around the league for years and are now on the home stretch of their respective careers.
“The only thing that’s crazy to me is you grow up watching those teams,” Williams said. “My whole college career, you watch them, and now we’re kind of emulating something that they were doing. It’s really cool. It’s special. And then we also get to play some of the players who were on that run, so you never take it for granted.
“Obviously, Dray and Curry, they’re not going to be playing for that much longer. So it’s cool to get these opportunities to play them. It’s very surreal.”
At a glance, OKC is vastly different from those dominant Golden State teams.
The Thunder pours it on offensively with drives and paint touches. The Warriors made it rain from behind the arc with Curry and Klay Thompson, also known as the Splash Bros.
The Thunder has two of the five most frequent isolation players this season in Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams. The Warriors leaned heavily on screens to free up Curry, whose zig-zag movements on the court resemble Lombard Street.
The Thunder has a mobile 7-footer in Holmgren, who ventures all the way out to the perimeter to contest shots. The Warriors had more traditional fives such as Andrew Bogut, who stationed himself around the rim and protected it like it was Alcatraz.
Still, the similarities are in the smaller details. And Green, a 35-year-old vet with elite vision, can see them.
“You have to like each other, which you can tell (OKC’s players) love each other,” Green said of what makes a successful team. “You have to understand roles, which they definitely understand their roles. They got their top dog, they got their No. 2 and everybody comes in and knows their role. That’s the way it has to be in order to win in this league. And they’re doing it, man.
“They’re a well-oiled machine. They kind of just plug and play, which is how we were during those times. So it was very interesting to watch (Tuesday).”
Green has one of the most potent personalities in all of sports.
His competitive fire hasn’t dwindled despite now being in his 14th season. And even though it can sometimes burn Golden State in the form of technical fouls and ejections, the good outweighs the bad.
Kerr hasn’t just embraced Green’s competitive fire. He has harnessed it, using it to ignite his group each game.
That acceptance of players’ personalities can also be seen with OKC. An over-controlling coach might take issue with the Thunder’s many postgame antics and TikTok dance videos. But Daigneault knows that’s his team’s way of expressing its tight-knit culture, and he doesn’t want it to unravel by pulling at threads.
“They’ve had a lot of unique personalities over time, and (Kerr) has just leaned into that,” Daigneault said. “He’s embraced the strengths of that, and I think it’s created a great prototype for anybody who’s paying attention for how to handle the unique personalities on your team. We have a unique team, too, and so I’ve tried to do that. That’s a lesson I’ve learned just from watching him from a distance.”
Holmgren also watched Golden State from a distance throughout the years, but he didn’t exactly take notes.
In a league where every game presents a different test, copying answers will only get you so far. So if OKC is going to create its own dynasty, it has to do it on its own terms.
“They were fun to watch because they really pushed the limits of basketball in terms of all of the different things they can do on the floor and how much talent they had,” Holmgren said. “But I think comparison is a lot of times a disservice to both parties. We’re just trying to be our own team. We’re trying to accomplish our own things over here.
“We’re still young, we have a long ways to go and we have to keep improving. But I definitely think that no matter what, we’re trying to pave our own path.”
That path could take OKC to heights no team has ever reached, including Golden State.
OKC boasts an average point differential of 15.3 this season. That’s better than its average of 12.9 points last season, which marked a league record. And it has dominated despite injuries to key players such as Williams, who has only played in three games due to a lingering right shooting wrist injury.
The Thunder has the reigning MVP in Gilgeous-Alexander. It has another All-NBA player in Williams and potentially a third in Holmgren. It has elite defenders for role players such as Lu Dort, Cason Wallace and Alex Caruso. It has a bench filled with guys who could start on other squads such as Ajay Mitchell, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe.
And with about one quarter of the season in the books, it seemingly has a chance to post the best regular-season record in NBA history. The thought of a team winning 74 games or more once seemed too absurd to share out loud, but that’s no longer the case.
Green was more than happy to talk about it.
“It’s hard, man, but I do think they’re capable,” Green said. “You just need so many things to go right, though. Health, which they kind of fly right through health. It doesn’t matter, it seems. A lot of breaks have to go your way, but they’re on the right track. … I think 73 wins took some years off of my life. It’s hard. But like I said, they’re capable of a lot.”
Justin Martinez covers the Thunder and NBA for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Justin? He can be reached at jmartinez@oklahoman.com or on X/Twitter at @Justintohoops. Sign up for the Thunder Sports Minute newsletter to access more NBA coverage. Support Justin’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.