Draymond on Kuminga: “super-special because he listens”

JK & Moody “probably end up being All-Stars”

Draymond Green did a 35-minute press conference, mainly to give an update on his back injury. We’ll have bonus video in a separate post that covers that.

But he also gave some great insights on rookies Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody. The above video is playable by clicking on it and the transcript is below.

Most notably the part where he says Moody has probably been taught how to be a professional since he was ten years old, whiles JK has acted like a normal rookie would — remember when James Wiseman forgot to get tested during last year’s All-Star Break? — and showed up late (presumably for practice).

Along with the mentorship of the veterans and coaching staff, you can already see how the Golden State Warriors have an infrastructure in place to properly develop youngsters. Some of it is organic, but a lot of it is structural, and credit to Steve Kerr, Bob Myers and Joe Lacob for enabling that. The list of homegrown talent is long and it looks like it’ll just keep growing. Imo Kevin Durant coming here for free agency has made a lot of fans on social media a bit jaded when it comes to the economics of NBA franchise-building and how important player development is, as it has a direct impact on a team’s salary cap table — but we’ll continue to talk about that as we do our game commentary livestreams, etc.

• JK: “I’ve seen Kuminga work ethic improve. Not that he wasn’t a hard worker because I haven’t been around him long enough to say whether he was a hard worker or not, but what I’ve seen is him learning how to work and as he’s learning how to work, his game is getting better. His understanding is getting better…Moses otoh…is like the old 19-yo, does everything right, works his butt off, no complaints about nothing and the reality is, both of those guys can and will be successful. One probably has someone teaching him what it’s like to work hard and be a professional since he was 10 years old and then the other one was probably extremely gifted and someone realized it, threw him out on the basketball court with his gifts and that was that, not much guidance. He now has that guidance and what he’s shown is, he believes in accepting that guidance and that he’s willing to change who he’s possibly been his entire life. Because of that, I think he’s going to be super-special because he listens. I’m not gonna sit here and lie to you and act like he’s had it all figured out from the beginning. No, he’s been late a few times, the vets have had to step in a few times and it’s beautiful to see because he’s nowhere near a finished product and all of those things, they happen. And if you don’t understand, you can either have someone write you off or you can have someone that believes in you and want to show you the way. One thing I can assure you, every coach, performance team, front office and, most importantly, player believes in him and does everything they can to help him and he listens to everything that you say. I have no doubt that he’s going to be great and he’ll continue to grow because it’s not that he doesn’t listen. I think it was a lack of things to listen to and now he’s getting that and it’s rapidly improving. Like I said, Moses will be successful for all of those reasons I already named. So the future is bright especially with those two. They’re gonna be damn good pros and probably end up being All-Stars.”

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