Frank Vogel's Warriors defense is showing early signs of being playoff-caliber

Frank Vogel's Warriors defense is showing early signs of being playoff-caliber originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO – Warriors associate head coach Frank Vogel was unimpressed when I mentioned during a brief pregame exchange Thursday night that the defense he coordinates is slowly on the rise.

“Yeah,” Vogel said, “but we got a long way to go.”

That was apparent an hour later, when head coach Steve Kerr called a timeout less than four minutes into the game after the Miami Heat, coming into Chase Center 21 hours after an overtime win in Los Angeles, sprinted to a 10-point lead.

Golden State’s defense started to surface late in the second quarter, closing with an 11-4 run, and turned ferocious in the second half. That, along with Stephen Curry’s third-quarter flurry, generated the wind behind a 120-100 blowout.

The Warriors went to bed with the positive vibes that come with a six-game win streak, their longest since March 2025.

“We would love to have better starts,” Curry said. “But the way that we respond is a great testament to how bad we want to be a great team. We’re not there yet, but this run that we’re on is building a lot of confidence.”

Kerr, tongue partly in cheek, went a step further: “I see what people say, that we’re going to suck and all that stuff. It’s our job to prove them wrong.”

The proof will surface if the defense continues trending upward. Five games into the season, the Warriors were 27th in the NBA in defensive rating. Over the last four, they are fourth. They’re now 16th overall.

After Miami, in the first quarter, shot 54.5 percent from the field, including 40 percent from deep, the Warriors limited the Heat to 35.9/26.5 splits over the final three quarters. They took full advantage of the Heat being on the second night of a back-to-back set.

“Our whole thing was just ‘stay the course’ and wear them down,” Kerr said. “But we had to find some defensive energy. And finally, late second quarter, we sped them up a little bit, turned them over, the crowd got into it and then we were much better defensively.”

The Warriors looked much more like the squad Vogel, in his first season on the staff, hoped to create from the first day of training camp. He wants a scrappy, physical defense and they are showing signs of becoming that.

“Frank’s been amazing,” Curry said. “He’s bringing in things that we’ve done in the past, things that pretty much every coach does, but also some nuances that are complex ideas but we’re keeping them simple – if that makes sense.”

When Golden State’s defense gets stingy, Draymond Green usually is in the middle of the action. He is, in football parlance, a great middle linebacker. He nailed his primary assignment, which was to contain Heat superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Antetokounmpo finished with 20 points, well below his 28.3-per-game average. To put a more germane point on it, he scored seven of Miami’s first 14 points inside the first four minutes and only 13 over the final 44 minutes – only four in the second half.

“Draymond was brilliant guarding Giannis,” Kerr said. “We didn’t really let him get too many buckets in the paint which is always key. You want to build a wall in front of him and make him score over the top, which he was doing in the first half. You live with those buckets. I think Dray does as good a job on him as anybody possibly can, the angles, using his strength to keep him out of the paint, and battling him without fouling.”

Draymond denies Giannis at the rim 😤 pic.twitter.com/gdr0U9OFe1

— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) November 6, 2026

Green did have ancillary support, as he often shared the floor with backup center Al Horford to build “the wall” that prevents Giannis from generating momentum that usually ends with him blasting to the rim for a dunk. He got one early, and no more.

“He came out hitting jumpers, and with a player like that you kind of got to live with him hitting jumpers,” Green said on the NBC Sports Bay Area’s Warriors Postgame. “But I think in the first half I was just giving him the jump shot, especially first quarter. I started to try to make him think a little bit when he was going to take the jump shot to kind of break up the rhythm of it.

“But I’ll be honest with you: No one in this league is stopping the Giannis one-on-one. If your teammates are not in gaps, not building a wall when he’s coming downhill, you stand no chance. It’s never a one-man army when you’re playing against Giannis and trying to stop him. It’s a full-team effort, because he’s a great player.”

This was Draymond at his finest, though. He tends to summon another gear when facing an opponent of a particular status. The wild dog tends to materialize when he’s assigned him to an MVP or even an All-Star.

His goal is to spread his tenacity throughout the roster.

“I think this team does have a collective nastiness to it,” Green said in the locker room. “But you gotta continue to build that. This is Game 9. To say you have an identity is not realistic.

“But the only thing you can go off of is the data that you have in front of you. Our team has shown that we have a backbone. When you’re trying to become a winning team, that’s important. It so something that you need.”

Green and Vogel are cut from similar cloth. Both have vision for building a defense that can pull the Warriors toward the playoffs. There remains plenty of time, but early indicators are positive.

Download and follow the Dubs Talk Podcast