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OAKLAND, Calif. – It was another classic Andre Iguodala moment in his reincarnation as the Golden State Warriors' playoff wise – before, during and after the dagger 3-pointer he rattled in the final seconds of Sunday's game ticked down.
You could not miss the way Iguodala hesitated when he caught the ball even though he was all alone on the left wing. Or the way he got the shot to ring the rim and drop even when he suggested that he would not. How he tried to say that he had achieved nothing at all.
"I was happy for Shaun," said Iguodala, referring to his teammate Shaun Livingston, who passed the ball without even looking into Iguodala's direction. "He made the right play. That's it. "
That, of course, is not it. The shot that sealed Game 2 of the N.B.A. Finals, after Iguodala had missed 13 of his last 14 attempts from 3-point range, is bound to go down as big as his big game, as long as Golden State wins this series against the Toronto Raptors. Or unless Iguodala tops it in the next week or so.
In eight seasons in Philadelphia, he's just one of the world's best-sellers, when he was an understudy to Allen Iverson. With Golden State, teammates expect Iguodala to be a filmmaker in the movie theater, and make every big deal when the opportunity arises in the real games and in the aftermath that one should be terribly impressed.
Yet it turns out that, in the Bay Area, there is something about the Iguodala that fills him with a (gasp) sense of pride. Win or lose this series, Iguodala's first book – "The Sixth Man," written with Carvell Wallace – will be published June 25.
Andre Iguodala, author, author of this article.
"It sounds good," Iguodala said with a smile. "It sounds good."
"It's more or less like therapy."
Those who have followed the Warriors' story over their five-year run of title contention might see Iguodala as an unlikely candidate to have produced the first book among the 38 players who have come to the team in this period. Iguodala, after all, who knows what he is referring to, and who is often referred to as "the machine" – season after season of the Warriors' leading the league in scrutiny.
"For five years, it weighs on you," Iguodala said, adding: "We're not looking at the actual human beings. But that's the gift and the curse. "
He continued: "The gift is more of a conversation about the game."
Iguodala is careful to insist that "The Sixth Man" and its 256 pages should not be seen as a tell-all. He sees the book as a journey to a pack "the foundation that was laid for my brain to work the way it does."
"It's more or less like therapy," Iguodala said. "You realize a lot about yourself."
Maybe Iguodala needed the two-year exercise of trapping his youth and career path after so long, in the oft-quoted words of Warriors Coach Steve Kerr, as Golden State's "adult in the room." It's typically Iguodala, 35, who provides counsel and direction for younger colleagues. Yet he has more and more eyes on the game, but the warriors expect, Iguodala decides to play next season, finishing out a three-year, $ 48 million contract.
"I want to play," Iguodala said. "I'm keeping it to myself, but it's going to be soon. I can play four or five more years. But I will not. "
That's Andre. Quotes like those are why he is routinely described as a contrarian, an instigator and, yes, a cynic. But from within team boundaries, only reverence spills out.
"Andre is highly respected as anyone in the NBA," said Bob Myers, Golden State's president of basketball operations. "He is respected as a player, as a teammate, as an intellectual, as kind of a pioneer in terms of what he's doing off the court. He's someone who's always kind of searching, educating himself, and he's very socially aware. "
And destined for the Hall of Fame?
Myers was chosen by his peers as the NBA's executive of the year in 2017, after the Warriors signed Kevin Durant away from the Oklahoma City Thunder, but he won the same award in 2015 after this group won the first of its three championships over four seasons.
His first big score as the lead voice of the Warriors' front office was the 2013 summer sign-and-trade to acquire the free agent Iguodala, which was possible only after Myers released two veterans (Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry) and persuaded the Utah Jazz to absorb the contracts of Richard Jefferson, Andris Biedrins and Brandon Rush via trade by also surrendering two first-round and two second-round draft picks to Utah.
Iguodala was represented in those days by Rob Pelinka, now the Los Angeles Lakers' general manager. Myers warned Iguodala and Pelinka repeatedly during negotiations that he feared Golden State would not be able to create salary-cap space for Iguodala's new contract.
To form agent himself, Myers felt compelled to advise them on the table (from Dallas, Sacramento and Denver, Iguodala's most recent employer) rather than miss out on the money if the Warriors could not manufacture the necessary salary cap office.
"He's something more than we thing him," Myers said of Iguodala. "We obviously do it with him, but they hung in there with us. Andre had a vision for what we could have had before. I always credit Andre for being somebody who believes in us even before we believe in ourselves. "
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It's a dramatic turn of its Philadelphia days, when Iguodala – as covered in the book – endured "most hated athlete in town" status for falling short of true franchise-player branding as Iverson's successor.
"It's interesting now, when I go back to Philly, I'm really embraced," Iguodala said. "When I was there, it never really felt like home. It just shows how sports work. When you win, when you have success, everyone wants to be part of it. "
'Perfectionist' may be mellowing
With the Warriors, Iguodala has also found a kindred spirit in Ron Adams, Golden State's seen-it-all, truth-telling assistant coach. The Warriors may be known as Kerr, but Iguodala and Adams, 71, share a favorite saying when it's time to get serious: Forget fun.
The word they use in place of "forget," mind you, is an expletive that starts with the same letter.
"He's a serious guy," said Adams of Iguodala. "He's fun off the court, but he's pretty old school."
Said Iguodala: "I'm a perfectionist but not within myself – within the team. I'm never satisfied. We could win eight straight games and we're watching movie and I'll say, 'We still are not got it yet.' "
In typical Iguodala fashion, he likes to look at his 2015 finals most valuable player trophy "four or five times" and is not totally sure where it is after a recent move. And he will not deny that he greets the outside world with a "shield-up, pessimistic outlook."
Iguodala purpose may be softening some. In his early days, Kerr, who asked him to accept the sixth job for the good of the group, Iguodala routinely shot down any suggestion from reporters that he was a natural in that role. Now it's the title of his first book.
"It's kind of like the Iggy nickname, which I always hated," Iguodala said. "I was always like, 'Stop calling me that.' I do not hate it as much as I used to – I do not mind if people know me call me Iggy. You just learn to embrace it. "
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