LeBron James recently stated on his Mind the Game podcast that IQ was the reason the Golden State Warriors beat the Boston Celtics in the 2022 NBA Finals. To an extent, Draymond Green agrees with his good friend, but the 34-year-old shares some more reasons for why the Warriors won.
“That to a certain degree is very true,” Green said on The Draymond Green Show. “I think we definitely had a higher IQ at the time. But I think it’s more than just a higher IQ though, we had a higher IQ, for sure, but it’s also IQ in the moment, in these situations.”
Green claims you can have a higher IQ but the moment can still get a bit too big for you.
“You get in these playoffs sometimes and this is the NBA Finals we’re talking about, sometimes those lights can get a little bit brighter than you expected,” Green continued. “And then they were much younger, had never been there. Had been to the Eastern Conference Finals, but had never been there. So, I think our basketball IQ was higher. I think at that time also, our coaching staff’s basketball IQ was higher, the adjustments that we made throughout that series, it made all the difference.”
(starts at 1:02 mark):
Green thinks the team and their coaching staff’s higher IQ and experience of having been on that big stage previously played a big part. The Warriors, of course, had made the NBA Finals in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 prior to that season.
For the Celtics, meanwhile, it was the first trip in the Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown era. They went up 2-1 in the series and led in the fourth quarter of Game 4, but crumbled down the stretch to lose. The Warriors would then win the next two games as well, to win the series in six games.
Green struggled mightily at the start of the series but came into his own at the end. He finished with averages of 6.2 points, 8.0 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 1.7 steals, and 0.7 blocks per game in the Finals to win his fourth NBA championship.
Tatum admitted later the Warriors were mentally tougher than the Celtics in the Finals and that it was a hard pill for him to swallow. With that experience now under their belts, though, you would expect the Celtics to handle the moment better should they make it back to the biggest stage.
What Did LeBron James Say?
On his podcast, LeBron was stressing about the importance of basketball IQ and stated that it is what separates teams when you get to the Conference Finals and the NBA Finals. It was then, that he brought up the 2022 NBA Finals.
“I believe that when Golden State beat Boston, it came down to IQ in the Finals,” LeBron said. “Because Boston, to me, had the better talent. Boston had the better talent. But it came down to IQ. People say experience – IQ.”
(starts at 34:47 mark):
While making that admission about the Warriors being mentally tougher, Tatum had said he felt the teams were evenly matched from a talent standpoint. James did not feel that was the case and thought it came down to one team having a higher basketball IQ.
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