Draymond Green is still in socks when the Golden State Warriors begin their morning shootarounds. With the players about to watch film of their upcoming opponent, assistant coach Luke Walton passes to a shoeless Green, who puts up the ceremonial 3-pointer that will open practice. As he shoots, though, something odd happens: Green is heckled by his own coach.  It would sound weird for a player to be jeered by his coach, but only if the player were anyone else. Green isn’t simply a breakout NBA star or the beating heart of what may be the best team in basketball history. He’s also the game’s supreme trash-talker.  Green plays better when he’s yapping and even better when he’s being yapped at. But his singular ability is now so known around the league that it’s actually a problem. The entire NBA is aware that the most effective way to defend Green is to wear a muzzle.  That’s why the Warriors don’t wait for other teams to engage Green. They trash-talk their own teammate.  “It’s like a challenge,” Green said. “And when someone’s challenging me, it wakes up a different beast in me.”  It has become clear as the Warriors chase back-to-back titles after their record-setting 73 wins that Stephen Curry is the most valuable player of the NBA, but Green may be the most valuable player of his own team. Curry is irresistible, and Green is irreplaceable. He may be the only person in the league who can guard every position, and he’s as essential as ever at the moment with Curry recovering from a sprained knee in their Western Conference semifinal against the Portland Trail Blazers, which the Warriors lead, 1-0, largely because of Green’s triple-double in Game 1.  No one in the NBA expected this. Green was a second-round draft pick in 2012, and he was penciled in for about 10 minutes per game at the beginning of last season. He strutted out with a championship and a lucrative contract extension. This is the year, though, that Green emerged as an All-Star and, as Warriors center Andrew Bogut said Sunday, “the best all-around player in the league.”  But what he really brings to the Warriors is an infectious charisma. Green will trash-talk anyone—even himself—because of what his teammates and coaches say is a competitive bonfire raging inside him. The source of the trash talk is irrelevant. It’s still kerosene when it comes from the people on his own team. “Whoever it is,” Green said. “It’s like, alright, let’s get it.”  The jawing starts with Green’s first shot on gamedays: the corner 3-pointer that Walton bets against. Walton is usually right. Warriors guard Brandon Rush estimated that Green sinks about 20% of these shoeless shots. Green, however, pointed to all the complicating variables—he’s either in socks or barefoot, and he often launches from behind the out-of-bounds line—before he simply disputed Rush’s accounting. “He made that up,” he said. “I’m not far off. But it’s not that bad.”  That shot is the least of it. Green has heard Walton yelling “hell no!” from the bench during games only to see him nodding in approval when he’s proven wrong. Walton, who was hired by the Los Angeles Lakers last week, even drew up a play for Green earlier this season after he had made three straight 3-pointers and told Green he wouldn’t make a fourth. So he did.  Timeouts were also when former Warriors assistant Alvin Gentry toyed with Green. “All the time,” he said. Gentry, now the New Orleans Pelicans coach, liked to point out an opposing player—the one he knew was Green’s man—and insist he was annihilating the Warriors’ defense. At that point he would ask: “Can anybody guard this guy?”  There is no time when Green is on the court that someone isn’t talking at him. It’s up to Warriors video coordinator Theo Robertson, a former college player at Cal, to get Green ready for the game in warmups, but he does more than fetch rebounds. It’s also his job to get in Green’s head. “Some days I try to go out there brash and boastful,” Robertson said. “Some days I won’t acknowledge him.”  The trick is to get Green angry—other teams won’t like him when he’s angry—but not too angry. In a February game in Oklahoma City, for example, Green unleashed on his own team in the halftime locker room, a tirade for which he later apologized. But last week, when he was named the NBA’s coach of the year, Steve Kerr singled out Green in his speech. “Keep yelling at me,” he said. “I’ll keep yelling at you.”  All players get yelled at by their coaches. Green is the one who hears it from his teammates, too. Last season, with the Warriors down, 2-1, in the NBA Finals and Green coming off a horrific performance, Curry had a bright idea. “He likes a little trash talk at him,” he said. “Maybe I’ll throw him some in practice tomorrow.” The Warriors won the next three games—and the NBA championship.  It’s not only the best player on the planet who gets in Green’s ear. Rush and Ian Clark are known in Golden State’s locker room as the players most likely to let Green hear it in practice. “If he’s putting up a shot, we’re yelling: ‘Brick!’” Clark said. “That gets him fired up.”  Green is used to it by now. Even his own mother has said she didn’t shy away from criticizing him on the court as a child, and it wasn’t long after he went to college that his Michigan State teammates realized that he feasted on their words. In the summer before his freshman year, Green couldn’t get through a running drill, and the Michigan State upperclassmen were not pleased. But in an open gym that afternoon, after an entire morning of verbal assault, they were in awe as Green played out of his mind. Travis Walton, his trainer, recalled thinking: “OK, that’s why we got him.”  This raises an obvious question: Why do NBA players bother trash-talking Green? It makes as much sense to mouth off at Green as it does to sag off Curry. And yet they do it anyway. “I love when they do,” Green said. The smarter ones have velcroed their traps—and Green has caught on. “It’s gotten me a few times when guys butter you up and you lay down a little bit,” he said. “I’ve learned. Like, all right, cool, but I’m still going at you.”  But he has reached the point that Green no longer needs others to tell him he can’t do something, because there is no one in Green’s vicinity who is safe when he’s trash-talking. Not even Green. “He talks to himself,” said Walton, his trainer.  He also talks about himself to others. Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, who watched Green kick countless basketballs at the gym ceiling, came here last month only to see the Minnesota Timberwolves deal the Warriors a shocking loss at the end of the regular season. After the game, Green sought out Izzo. “He pulled me aside and said: ‘I sucked,’” Izzo said. His old coach’s response: “Yes, you did.”  Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com
Golden State Warriors’ star Draymond Green is the NBA’s supreme trash-talker, but since it only makes him play better, his teammates join in too