Draymond offers Warner a pointed analogy for the 49ers’ Super Bowl losses originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
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If there’s anyone who knows how to win a championship, or two, or three, or four, it’s Draymond Green and the Warriors. If there’s one player and team that doesn’t, it’s Fred Warner and the 49ers.
While that may hurt the 49ers Faithful to hear, it’s true and could be a reason why San Francisco has fallen short in recent Super Bowl appearances.
Green joined Warner on the latest episode of his podcast, “The Warner House,” where he discussed the advantage you get from knowing how to win a championship, how that benefited the Warriors in their victory in the 2022 NBA Finals series on the Boston Celtics and why it might have benefited the Kansas City Chiefs in their recent Super Bowl victory over San Francisco.
“I think what people don’t realize, and I think you’ll even learn this, is that once you do it, you know how,” Green told Warner. “And once you know how to do it… we won a championship in 2022, not because we were the best team. We won the championship in 2022 because we knew how. Like Steph [Curry]Klay [Thompson] and I knew how to win, and so we knew how to win a championship. Boston didn’t know how to win a championship.
“And so, when it came down to it, one of the things that the Chiefs have over all of you, and it’s a hump that you’re all going to have to get over, is that they know how to do it. So at any moment, they have something to draw from and say, ‘Oh, this is so, and we did this.’ Or ‘The mentality must be this way now.’ Or “if we can attack this guy, he would attack that guy when we did this.” “
An example of Green and the Warriors’ championship history that benefited them was when Golden State fell behind in the series against Boston over two years ago, and how they used their previous playoff experience to increase their focus in the middle of the series. move and shut down Boston. in six games.
“Speaking of 2022, yep, 2022, after Game 3 we were down 2-1 and I walk into the locker room, and I walk off the field and I think to myself, ‘This feels so familiar’ and I literally walk into the room in. dressing room and [Steph’s] the first person I see,” Green recalled. And I just see he has this look on his face like… I stop and I’m standing there looking at him… and he says, ‘You’re thinking what I’m thinking?’ I said, ‘This is it [the Warriors vs. Grizzlies Western Conference semifinal series] all over again, because in 2015 we were down 2-1 in Memphis, and it felt like the world was falling apart, but we had never done that before.
“So I say ‘This feels like Memphis’ and he says ‘Yes! That’s exactly what it feels like…’ he says ‘Cool, okay, it’s over.’ I say, ‘Yes, it’s definitely over.’ … I get to Klay (in the locker room in 2022) and Klay says, ‘Dray, this feels really 2015-ish.’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely.’ I knew immediately it was over, they were done, we had won.”
And sure enough, the Warriors won.
Green’s long-winded point is essentially that some teams just know how to win a championship and what mid-game or mid-series adjustments are needed to put them over the top.
That’s not to say Warner and the 49ers won’t hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy one day, but once they do, or if they do, Green believes it will be much, much easier to do so again.
“And so I said all that to say that once you do it, you know how to do it, and Steve Kerr knows how,” Green explained. “And so he knows when to push the button, he knows when to make the adjustment, he knows when to do something. Because he knows how to do it, and once you do it, it’s just a feeling you get like ‘Oh’, that’s that? boom, no problem, we have this, we know how to do that now.’
“And once y’all do it, ’cause I think y’all will, but I’ll tell you this, you gotta do it quick man, ’cause you can’t keep missing the window. You got this window, and you gotta get that kick it in because if you don’t kick in the window it will slam shut. I think you all can do it and I think you all will do it but you all have to kick in the window and if you do it once, the You’re much more likely to do it twice than you are to do it do it once.
The Chiefs, much to the chagrin of the 49ers, have been there before. Not once, not twice, but now three times.
Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, coach Andy Reid, tight end Travis Kelce and other veterans on the roster likely agree with Green’s overarching sentiment.
It’s an advantage Warner and the 49ers would like to experience sooner rather than later.
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