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The Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets are now two games into a playoff series that feels like it was ripped straight out of 1993. Game 1 saw only 180 total points scored, with the winning Warriors tallying just 95. Both sides are playing incredibly physical defense, Jimmy Butler has already gotten hurt and, predictably, tempers are running hot on both sides of this renewed rivalry.
Usually, when that happens in a Warriors game or series, it means Draymond Green is about to get involved in a scrap. That happened in Golden State’s 109-94 Game 2 loss on Wednesday, but this time Green was the recipient of a hard foul, not the perpetrator.
With under eight minutes to go in the game and the Rockets leading by double digits, Jalen Green ran into Draymond. When the two fought for space, Jalen delivered an elbow to Draymond’s face. The play was initially called a personal foul on Jalen Green, and after review it was upgraded to a flagrant-1 foul.
This Rockets team is in its first playoff run, and for Jalen Green, this was only his second postseason game. Draymond, on the other hand, has been doing this for more than a decade. He knows where the lines are, what he is and isn’t allowed to do, and how to agitate less experienced players and bait them into fouls like this. Below are just a few examples of his physicality so far in this series.
The Rockets won the game to tie the series at 1-1, and Jalen Green was spectacular in the process. After a miserable Game 1 in which he shot 3-of-15 from the field, he rebounded to score 38 points in an enormous win for Houston. This was his playoff breakout, yet it also involved this dust-up with Draymond. It didn’t matter in a game with a double-digit margin, but as the series shifts to San Francisco, things are only going to get harder for the Rockets.
The last thing they can afford is to allow Draymond to frustrate them, especially since another of their key players, Dillon Brooks, has a lengthy history of feuding with the future Warriors Hall of Famer. This is going to be a physical, defense-first series, but the Rockets need to be careful not to cross any lines and give Golden State advantages it doesn’t earn on the court.
