The capillaries under Georges Niang’s eye have been angry for a week. On Sunday they screamed when Niang caught an elbow to the socket from sinewy Los Angeles Clippers forward Derrick Jones Jr. The next day they turned the Golden State Warriors forward’s lower eyelid black. By Friday, a watercolor of yellow and green shaded above his cheek, the skin healing and almost ready for the next bruise.
There will be a next one. It is inevitable, the way the 33-year-old Niang plays basketball. On Thursday night, an already black-eyed Niang rammed his chest into the chest of Miami Heat big man Bobby Portis, then rammed his face into Portis’ face. Sounds almost romantic. It was not. Portis’ large body was impeding Niang’s path back downcourt, as he saw it, and Niang has long built a lunch-pail identity on the same doctrine endorsed by Warriors teammate Draymond Green. He is not about to change, now, in Golden State.
Advertisement
“When you think you’re too good to take out the trash every single day, that’s when you run into problems, right?” Niang told the Chronicle on Friday, a day after drawing double technicals with Portis in the Warriors’ 120-100 win over Miami. “And I feel like my mentality of showing up, working hard, and being that chip-on-the-shoulder guy is – taking out the trash every day. Like, that’s who I am. That’s what’s gotten me here. So why would I get here and then revert back to being, like, a nonchalant guy?”
In all respects, really, Niang is one of the least nonchalant guys in the NBA. Against the Lakers last week, he went nose-to-nose and forehead-to-forehead with former Utah Jazz teammate Collin Sexton, for some reason. The Chronicle has gone around Golden State’s locker room asking teammates for their favorite early-season Niang trash-talking moments, and most cannot give one. Not because they can’t identify any but because they can point to too many.
“He talks s- everywhere, bro,” guard Brandon Williams said with a smile. “Yeah, everywhere. If it’s something competitive, he’s talking s-.”
One Warrior referred to Niang as a “walking clip.” Reserve big Charles Bassey, who had Niang as a teammate in Philadelphia, said Niang – whose father is from Senegal – imitates Bassey’s Nigerian accent every time he sees him (not, to be clear, in a bad context). Niang has cracked jokes about his own decidedly-un-NBA-like body while changing, and has donned a Jackie Moon costume from the movie “Semi-Pro” for Halloween, and sometimes “blacks out” when he gets to butting heads on the court, as guard De’Anthony Melton said.
Advertisement
For all these reasons, and several sets of deeper intangibles, a veteran journeyman on a partially guaranteed minimum deal has glued himself across the cracks in Golden State’s six-game winning streak. Niang has stuck, in coach Steve Kerr‘s rotation and his heart. He has stuck, in the trust of Green and Stephen Curry. He has stuck, because he always has managed to stick, because you don’t earn nicknames like “Minivan” and “G Wagon” without rubbing friends the right way and enemies the wrong way.
“He’s been great for us,” Green said in the locker room Thursday night. “Like, what an addition. He’s been one of those signings that people look at like, ‘Oh, man’ – then you look up and this guy, you can’t keep him off the floor. So he’s been absolutely incredible for us. I have absolutely loved being his teammate.
“Because I’ll be honest, sometimes, I do some random s- out there. Especially on the defensive end. But even on the offensive end, I do some random s- at times. And he just picks up on it like that,” Green continued, snapping his fingers.
After a year off the court while rehabbing a foot injury, Niang got off to a legitimately horrendous start in Golden State’s opening three-game losing streak, missing 12 consecutive 3-point attempts. He’s still at 31% from deep on the year, his calling card. He is averaging 7.9 points in 20.1 minutes per game. But Niang currently sits third on the Warriors with a plus-6.2 on-off split, a nod to his ability to find his niche with starting groups and offer the off-ball creation necessary in Yaxel Lendeborg-led lineups.
Advertisement
Kerr, for one, pointed to a play in the Miami win where Niang swung the ball to Green, intuitively set a pin-down for Curry, and gave Curry a wide-open three. This wasn’t a designed play. This was “concept basketball,” as Kerr put it.
How quickly, in the grand scheme of Golden State’s veteran free-agent signings over the years, has Niang figured out the inimitable mythos of the Curry-Green dynamic?
“Instantly,” Kerr said Friday. “Instantly.”
Niang has never really told Kerr this directly, but he believes the Warriors’ head coach – and Golden State’s golden era – is directly responsible for Niang’s 10-year NBA career. It has all come full circle, now. The Warriors once loved Niang coming out of the 2016 NBA draft from Iowa State, and signed him to a training-camp deal in 2017, and subsequently subjected him to a league reckoning.
Advertisement
He didn’t really understand NBA offense, then, after a year with Indiana. That summer, in 2017, Niang participated in weeks of no-dribble, three-on-three workouts with Golden State’s role players. He played, consistently, in a squad against former Warriors center Zaza Pachulia and forward Omri Casspi. He was whupped, consistently, by them.
Niang will be the first to tell you: He is not athletic. He has a bald spot. He does not look like an NBA player. But neither, really, did the 6-foot-11 Pachulia or journeyman Casspi. And Niang couldn’t figure it out.
“And then after you play a while, it’s like, ‘OK, I’m done getting my ass kicked,'” Niang recalled to the Chronicle. “Like, ‘I’m gonna start using the cuts and screens that they use on me.’ And then so, like, that three-four weeks I had, I was able to like, understand spacing, cutting.”
Niang calls this “advantage basketball.” He has understood it, well enough, to once stick in Eastern Conference-hopeful rotations in Philadelphia and Cleveland. Golden State’s entire system is built, now, around advantage basketball, without a wealth of top-end self-creation talent but an increasingly visible amount of depth.
Advertisement
On Friday, Curry and Green went to the bench with the Warriors up 17 and 7:02 left. They did not return. The two engines of a dynasty weren’t needed. Lendeborg has proved plenty capable as a decision-maker to carry non-Curry lineups just nine games into his NBA career, and fourth-year guard Brandin Podziemski has upped his self-creation volume, and backup point guard Brandon Williams can create advantages by simply blowing past a point-of-attack defender.
And Niang creates advantages by spotting up. And just, kind of, moving around.
“If a team has three superstars, it’s like, ‘OK, they can go score because that superstar can go get an advantage,'” Niang said. “Well, we have two guys and a mixture of other guys that can go get an advantage. Now, am I saying that’s an automatic, ‘We’re going to win a championship?’ No.
“But it allows us to have the confidence to know that we can play advantage basketball.”
Advertisement
Niang learned the other element of his identity, though, far before he arrived in Golden State. He self-deprecated, in late October, that he looks like a janitor. He does not look like he belongs on a basketball court. And perception is reality, he likes to say.
The result? Scare tactics, he said himself, learned from a young age. If one talks like a basketball player, and walks like one, then they might just be one. It hasn’t always played to his benefit. Once in a game with Philadelphia a few years ago, he ran past a referee, frustrated.
“I was like, ‘Can I get a f- call?'” Niang recalled.
The referee, as Niang recalled, said yes. He asked Niang to hold on, one second, until the play finished. And then turned back to Niang, blew his whistle, and gave him a technical.
Advertisement
“That one hurt,” Niang said. “Because I wasn’t making that much money.”
He lost a little more money on Thursday, with the Portis kerfuffle. He’ll probably lose some more. That, though, is all what makes the Warriors contract worth it.
“It’s just like, that I’ve had to prove myself every day,” Niang said, asked about his trash-talk. “And this is my line in the sand. And I’m not moving back off that line, you know?”
Subscribe
There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.
This article originally published at Warriors’ Georges Niang making mark by talking smack, drawing elbows and more.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
