Morning Distribution for Wednesday, June 8, 2022

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Morning Distribution]( Wednesday, June 8, 2022 Your daily briefing from FiveThirtyEight --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors]( [The Warriors’ Defense Is Impossible To Overlook]( By [Robert O'Connell]( Even on nights when he notches a [triple-single]( Draymond Green has a knack for making himself the main character. During and after the Golden State Warriors’ equalizer against the Boston Celtics in Sunday’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals, it was the non-basketball stuff that gained attention. There was the early [lead-blocking]( of Grant Williams — a play that resulted in Williams getting dinged with a personal foul — and the elbow joust shortly thereafter that earned Green a technical. There was the general and persistent huffiness: the butting in on referees’ conferences, the motivational stylings that even the aggro-est of travel-team dads might deem a little much. The apex came when Green crashed into Jaylen Brown on a 3-pointer, used him as a footrest and shoved him in the back in the span of a [five-second spat]( — and somehow avoided a night-ending second tech. Postgame, Green termed his contributions an “attitude adjustment.” “If I’m not sending that message,” he [said]( “who is sending that message?” It took more than making a scowlier face, though, to slow down the team that outscored the Warriors by [24 fourth-quarter points]( in Game 1. Maybe the most telling sequence, for Green and the Golden State defense as a whole, came in the second quarter, when Brown drove from the left wing late in the shot clock. Brown has spent key stretches of the postseason rescuing doomed possessions, but here he ran into quicksand. First Green shot a right hand into Brown’s dribble, forcing him to pick up the ball. Then, while Brown pivoted in search of an outlet, Green mirrored the moves, eating up more airspace with each one. The last-ditch fadeaway fell well short and said enough; Green didn’t have to celebrate it. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: The California Primary Races To Watch]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.