When it comes to defending some of the NBA's best scorers, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green has more experience than most of his peers.
Playing in the same conference as Houston Rockets star James Harden and Oklahoma City Thunder MVP favorite Russell Westbrook, as well as having a lengthy playoff history against Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James, Green knows the intricacies of defending elite offensive threats.
The differences in Harden, Westbrook and James's games are immense, though, and Green knows that only unique approaches to each player will work to limit their talents.
Since Green has faced off against LeBron in the past two NBA Finals (and could be heading for a third-straight title matchup against King James this June), he didn't say as much about the keys to defending him as he did about Westbrook and Harden.
Still, he explained in a FOX Sports article that the only hope a defender has against an all-around superstar like James is to keep him guessing:
"With LeBron, obviously it's different because he does so much. It's about mixing it up. You can't always pick LeBron up and pressure him, but you can't always sit back. You've got to do both.
"So with him, as a defender, one possession you're playing him one way, the next possession you're playing him a completely different way, and you just try to keep him off-balance as much as you can. Give him a steady diet of one thing, he'll pick that (expletive) apart. He's one of the smartest players to ever play the game."
When it comes to Westbrook, who averaged the first season-long triple-double since Oscar Robertson in 1962, Green said a more passive approach is often the right answer defensively:
"I see Russ a lot. The way I like to defend Russell is sometimes I like to sit back and make him shoot jump shots and sometimes activate and force him to go to the rim.
"As crazy as that sounds -- most people would say, 'Why would you send Russell to the rim, that's what he wants to do?' [And it's true] the best thing about Russell's game is not his jump shot. If you're going to pick any shot for Russell Westbrook to take, it's his jump shot."
The opposite approach is true for Harden, Green said in the article. Instead of sitting back, he gets in Harden's face to avoid letting him dribble his way into a rhythm:
"No. 1, take his space away. There are certain guys in the league that get their rhythm off their dribble. He's one of those guys. The more you just let him dribble, dribble, dribble, the more into his rhythm he gets. The more rhythm he gets…look, the chances of you stopping a player like that is already slim.
"Once you let him dance, dance, dance and get that rhythm, that slim chance is cut in half. At that point it's just a matter of whether he misses the shot or not. So crowd his space, but don't use your hands. That's why I have my hands way out [to my side] because he's tricky."
Fortunately for Green, he'll only have to play, at most, either Harden or Westbrook, and that assumes the team that wins the Rockets-Thunder first-round series is able to make it past either the Spurs or Grizzlies.
That potential Finals rubber match against LeBron, though, seems a little bit more likely to happen, based on the Celtics 0-2 deficit to the No. 8 seed Chicago Bulls.