Brown likes what he's hearing from ‘dynamic leader' Green

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SAN DIEGO – Having run enough laps around NBA circles to coach Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, Warriors assistant coach Mike Brown should know a bona fide leader when he sees one.

Or when he hears one.

And after only a few months around Draymond Green, Brown has seen and heard enough to believe the Warriors power forward fits the bill.

“He can be a dynamic leader,” Brown said Monday, after practice at UC-San Diego. “He can be one of the best that I’ve been around because he is vocal. He’s not afraid. And he’s got a presence.

“But more importantly, he still has game. So everybody respects that.”

Green last season led the Warriors in assists and rebounds, finishing third on the team in scoring. He also led the team in technical fouls. It was his propensity to collect technical fouls that put him in position to be suspended for Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

Green did most of his post-practice work with assistant coach Luke Walton and player development coach Theo Robertson. Both are no longer with the Warriors, as Walton was named head coach of the Lakers and lured Robertson to join his new staff.

In Walton’s place is Brown, who seems to be developing a connection with Green.

“I started building a relationship with Mike in the preseason,” Green said. “He would come to all my workouts and watch while I was working with my trainer. It kind of picked up from there.”

Brown has had mixed results with previous high-profile players; in his brief stint as coach of the Lakers, he didn’t always mix well with Bryant. James speaks highly of Brown, who averaged 54.4 wins per season while coaching the Cavaliers for five years during James’ first tour with the franchise.

He not only likes what he sees from Green on the floor and in the locker room but also what he heard last week, when he rushed to the defense of teammate Kevin Durant, whose offseason move to the Warriors was criticized by Clippers forward Paul Pierce.

“Definitely, no doubt about it,” Brown said. “To have a voice like that . . . in my opinion, every championship team needs somebody like that – that’s not afraid to be the alpha dog, whether it’s in privacy with team stuff, or publicly like that.”

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