GREEN WANTS NO MORE SANCTIONS: "I KNOW RIVALS WILL GO FOR ME"

"I am prepared, I have learned to handle certain situations. I know that some coach will tell one of his players to provoke me." Last year, Green was suspended for the fifth game of the Final, when the Cavaliers' comeback started, for kicking LeBron James at the end of the fourth (when the match was already settled). Previously he could be penalized by an even uglier kick to Steven Adams in the Western Final, against Oklahoma City Thunder.The rivals know that Green can explode if he pricks. And the Warriors fear they will use it to destabilize a player who is essential to Steve Kerr's team. And the reporter Marc Stein asked the own power forward, great favorite to be chosen Best Defender of the Year, on the matter: "I'm ready to put all the lights on me. I hope that level of scrutiny is great. If it is not, it is that it is not doing things well. No one would care so I hope it stays that way. It has already been so in the season but in the playoffs everything comes down to very different levels ... It's fun. "Now, moreover, he says he has learned and matured. So the Warriors should not expect new treacherous sanctions: "I am myself and I know who I am ... But I will not give anyone a margin to make me who I do not want to be." Of course, he understands that rivals may try to tickle him: "I'm prepared, I've learned from the things that have happened to me in the last year, I've learned to handle certain situations. It is obvious that the suspension of the fifth game was key, to understand that I can not put myself in such situations, I can not accumulate flagrant and technical fouls, I can not leave my things in the hands of third parties. I know that in the playoffs some coach will tell one of his players to provoke me. "That suspension helped sink Warriors who looked unbeatable in the Finals but lost three straight games: "I do not think too much about being backed up. As I see it ... we lost. I do not think they lifted us a 3-1, it could have been a 0-3 when I was sanctioned and a 0-4 final. The thing is that we lost, that we do not have that flag in the top of our pavilion. We do not have a ring. What you want is to return to a situation like that, try to win another championship. "Moreover, his way of understanding the game will not change: "If I leave the track with the certainty that I have given everything, that night I can sleep: I have to know that I have emptied. If I can do that every night, in every game, I'll feel good about myself.

• Isabel López