THOMAS & MACK CENTER, LAS VEGAS, NV — The final score didn’t matter, but the Golden State Warriors did have three players, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Harrison Barnes, in the so-called USA Basketball’s Men’s National Team “Showcase” last night.
Stephen Curry, the fourth of five potential Warriors chosen to participate this week, did not play, choosing to opt-out from the event, which was deemed an “All-Star Game-like” exhibition by Team USA’s leaders, managing director Jerry Colangelo and head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Thompson and Green joined the likes of Kawhi Leonard, Blake Griffin and DeMarcus Cousins on the White Team in defeat of the Barnes’ Blue Team.
The biggest names on the Blue Team were perhaps DeMar DeRozan or USA World Championship gold-medal veteran Kenneth Faried, so this was an opportunity for Barnes to shine. Golden State’s small forward got the start alongside Bradley Beal, DeRozan, Faried, and Andre Drummond.
Barnes’ numbers were strong: 21 points, 10 rebounds, 8-for-15 from the field to go along with 3-for-7 from beyond the arc, but his last two treys clanked off the rim as Blue fruitlessly tried to come back from a ten-point deficit with less than two minutes to play, having trailed almost the entire game.
And it just so happened that Barnes’ teammate off the bench, Victor Oladipo stole the show, crossing over White’s Michael Carter-Williams for a rim-rattling dunk with the game in the balance, the crowd roaring in appreciation. Oladipo finished with 25 points, to go along with an impressive 9 rebounds and 5 assists, easily overshadowing Barnes’ catch-and-shoots and nifty moves to create jumpers for himself.
Meanwhile, Green tallied a game-high 10 assists on a quiet night of shooting and almost literally a night off from his usual feistiness in the paint, tallying just three rebounds and two shot attempts, one of them an early three-pointer. He scored just two points while the rest of the White Team collected a minimum of 13 points apiece.
Perhaps the weirdest sight for Warriors fans was Green spending a good portion of the game guarding Barnes. I was about ten rows away on press row and kept a sharp eye on any communication between the two. Talking with each other was largely avoided. One might assume it was a strategy — a smart one — employed by Harrison, who knows full well that any verbal exchange with Draymond can spark fire in his eyes.
The two did chat, however, at adjacent free throw lane blocks late in the game when Carter-Williams soared high for an attempted answer-back dunk against Oladipo, only to get fouled.
Finally, Thompson made SportsCenter’s Top 10 with this dazzling dribbling display, going through legs of his defender DeRozan. This kind of move is apparently called “nutmegging”, a term borrowed from English soccer.
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DeRozan and Thompson exchanged smiles on the next sequence.
Said Klay after the game, “I knew DeMar wasn’t really going to contest, so I was going to try and throw it through his legs. I wish I would have thrown a better lob; maybe that would have made top 10. That was a fun time, though.”
Thompson finished with 15 points, 4 rebounds, and 6 assists, going 3-for-10 from beyond the arc.
We’ll have a more detailed analysis of the game in a later post.
(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via ESPN2 broadcast)
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