OAKLAND – This, when it means so much and when everyone is watching, is the easy part.

The games against Arthur Hill High School in Saginaw, Mich., the ones against Michigan in college, the ones against the Clippers or the ones for the Larry O’Brien trophy never require him to be creative.

It’s the other ones when Draymond Green’s mind really gets to work.

“You find something that motivates you,” he told the Register. “Maybe it’s not a rivalry that you create in your mind, but you have to find something that’s in there that motivates you to say, ‘I want to kill him or I want to kill this team.’ I create something like that all the time.”

While Green and the Warriors haven’t killed the Cleveland Cavaliers yet, they’ve seriously maimed them. They’ve opened the NBA Finals with a pair of blowouts with Green as the biggest star, pounding his chest and hollering at no one in particular to the pleasure of the Oracle Arena crowds.

Now, Green wouldn’t really kill for a win – probably. But, his competitiveness and energy, traits that have helped the Warriors and him reach great heights, don’t really have many limits.

“There is no ‘too far’ for him,” Travis Walton, one of Green’s former Michigan State teammates, said.

Green agrees.

“Absolutely not,” he said defiantly. “I’ll cross any line to win.”

That fire burns within so many of the Warriors. You can’t win a league-record 73 games without it, and you can’t come back from a 3-1 deficit to the Oklahoma City Thunder without it.

It just burns loudest and brightest in the 6-foot-7, 230-pound Green.

A second-round draft pick who can name everyone selected ahead of him in order, Green can’t stop being this way.

If the team is out to dinner and plays credit card roulette, a game in which someone gets stuck with the entire bill while everyone else dines for free, teammates say it’s almost as bad when Green wins as it is when he loses.

“He’s very vocal. His emotions are very visible,” Golden State center Festus Ezeli said. “… He’s like that all the time. When he wins, when he loses, he’s a loud guy.”

And, truth be told, that can sometimes be a little much to handle.

“I think the off switch was broken a long time ago,” Warriors forward Harrison Barnes said. “We’ve given up on trying to find it.”

Walton and some of Green’s Michigan State teammates got a look at that fire right away.

During a preseason workout before his freshman season, Green struggled to keep up with his teammates during a conditioning drill, leading to more running for the team.

Later that day, the team gathered again for an open gym to play, and Walton and the other Spartans veterans let Green know he needed to be better in the workouts.

“We’re all mad because we had to run that little bit extra,” Walton said. “Being Draymond, he’s arguing back with us and getting into it.”

His response?

“I destroyed them in that open gym,” Green said. “I knew they were thinking ‘He ain’t doing nothing because he’s struggling with conditioning.’ My thing was, ‘Ya’ll might be able to do this conditioning stuff better than me because this isn’t something I’ve ever really done. But on this basketball court, I’ve done this a lot. None of you are going to outdo me here.’”

And that carries over.

“Anything I do, I’m trying to win,” he said. “I’ve always been the same way. That’s me. I stopped playing video games because I hate losing. I wasn’t very good, so I stopped.”

If Walton or one of his friends crack a joke at Green’s expense in a group text message, they know what to expect because with Green, nothing is off limits.

“He’ll find pictures on the internet. He’ll compare you to other people,” Walton said. “He takes it to another level. He’s so naturally competitive at everything. He wants to win or have the leg up, no matter what’s going on.”

“You definitely have to adjust to it,” Warriors big man Marreese Speights said. “If you’re not used to it, it can get to you.”

But, it’s worth it to adjust because there’s plenty of skill to go with everything else.

Green can guard anyone on the floor, something the Warriors learned early last season when an injury to David Lee opened a spot in their starting lineup. He’s an improved shooter, a devastating playmaker and a constant source of energy and emotion.

“He’s big for us. Everybody feeds off of it,” Ezeli said. “He carries a huge weight for our team. It’s one of the reasons we’re so good. He wants to win. That’s the emotion you get from someone that competitive. It drives that force for us.”

Since he became a key part of the Warriors’ rotation, they’re used to relying on Green for that emotion. And, besieged by controversy over an errant kick to Steven Adams’ groin and with a possible suspension looming with his next flagrant foul, for once, he reined it back in.

Walton and the Michigan State coaches talked about one play in particular, a rebound when Green ended up knocked to the floor. He didn’t complain. He didn’t gesture at an official. He just got up and said nothing.

It wasn’t like him.

“That was the first time I think everything that was going on actually got to him,” Walton said. “… He played timid. He wasn’t screaming or hollering.”

Normally, Green’s an expert at balancing the volatile emotional swings, somehow holding it together while feeling all the highs and all the lows. This, though, was different.

He was struggling.

He followed a 1-for-9 night with a 1-for-7 outing in back-to-back losses in Oklahoma City.

“I’ve only seen him low a couple of times, and the OKC series was one of them,” Speights said. “But, he found a way to bounce back.”

And, in Game 1 against the Cavaliers, Green looked like his old self. He barked at his opponents, dove for loose balls, let his arms and legs fly. In Game 2, he got hot from the arc, becoming an honorary Splash Brother by draining five 3-pointers.

He just played. And, they won.

With so much at stake, the chance to cap the Warriors’ 73-win regular-season record with back-to-back trophies, Green can’t savor the wins. Not yet.

If he doesn’t keep getting them, he knows what comes next, and that’s a problem for him.

“I hate to lose more than I like to win,” he said, sitting down about to do another interview. “Losing bothers me more than winning satisfies me.”

Contact the writer: dwoike@ocregister.com