PORTLAND — The question many Warriors fans and followers ask themselves about JaVale McGee has flipped over the past nine months.

In early August: Why’d they sign that guy to a training camp contract? In late April: I wonder why that guy isn’t getting more minutes?

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Warriors’ Steve Kerr says NBA needs more Black head coaches “I’m happy with the minutes I’m getting,” McGee said. “I’m efficient as I can be and we’re winning. So I can’t be the guy that says ‘Play me more minutes than what you’re doing’ because it’s working on my behalf and the team’s behalf. So I don’t have no problem with it.”

Andre Iguodala made the recruiting pitch, Bob Myers made the decision, Steve Kerr sculpted the usage plan and McGee put in the work. What’s resulted is one of the more productive minimum contract seasons in recent memory. Forget what’s to come for McGee over the next two months. What he’s already delivered is well above the expected value when the two sides linked up weeks before camp.

McGee played 739 minutes this season. He dunked 121 times (the 12th most in the league). When McGee was on the floor, the Warriors’ offensive rating was a team-best 121.4 (points per 100 possessions) and their net rating was a team-best 18.7. He had the best per-minute plus/minus in the league.

So much of that is because of the four All-Stars that surround him. But McGee’s lob threat — vertical spacing, Steve Kerr calls it — unlocks an elevated version of his Hall of Fame teammates. McGee was the fifth member of this season’s Death Lineup.

In 126 minutes together, the Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, JaVale McGee pairing outscored teams by 96 points: a 124.4 offensive rating, 92.2 defensive rating and 32.1 net rating — easily the most effective high-usage (100 minutes or more) lineup in the NBA this season.

Once the playoffs arrived, some believed, his impact would lessen. Maybe it eventually will. But not in Round 1. The Blazers were an ideal matchup and his production ramped into overdrive. Against an overwhelmed Portland frontline, McGee scored 39 points in 49 minutes, blocking nine shots and making 18 of his 23 shots, mostly volcanic alley-oops that jolted his team’s adrenaline.

In McGee’s 49 minutes on the court, the Warriors outscored the Blazers by 48. In his 143 minutes off of it, they outscored the Blazers by 23. So a McGee injection — against the Blazers — turned the Warriors from solid to outrageously dominant: a 132.5 offensive rating, 90.3 defensive rating and 42.2 net rating in his Round 1 court time.

Which begs the obvious question: Why didn’t McGee play more? He only averaged 12.3 minutes in the four games. Steve Kerr’s — and now Mike Brown’s — explanation has been simple. JaVale is like a Nos button in the Fast and Furious movies. You inject him to send your car into warp speed, but — like a star in Mario Kart — it can only last a limited amount of time.

“Most 7-footers, when it comes to pick-and-roll action, we’re telling them: ‘Hey, kind of be close to the screen, but it’s OK if you’re down the floor,'” Brown said. “But we’re telling (JaVale) in pick-and-roll situations, especially against Portland’s great guards, be up the floor, be up the floor. So he’s up the floor, then he’s chasing the ball to the rim, blocking it, trying to get a rebound. Then sometimes, he’s closing out, contesting a shot. And then we’re having him set the screen and: ‘Hey, every time you set a screen, you roll. If you don’t get it, come back out, set a screen and roll again.’ So he expends a lot of energy with how hard he plays. We feel he’s a five- to six-minute type guy. Then you sit him down.”

The Warriors have unlocked the best version of JaVale McGee, revived his career and, still only 29-years-old, that’s likely to net him a nice contract offer in another flush free agency market this offseason.

With so many other, more vital parts that need to get paid (Curry, Durant, Andre Iguodala), Golden State isn’t likely to have the available money McGee may command. But the partnership has been fruitful and both sides seem to realize it.

McGee was in a bad basketball place the past few years. Hairline leg fractures had sapped him of his early-career bounce. That’s why he said he “cringed” during Game 3, watching Jusuf Nurkic rush back and hobble around on an injury he knows all too well.

“He’s a heavy guy,” McGee said. “That’s one thing I figured about my injury. I couldn’t play on it heavy. I had to lose a lot of weight. Last season, I went vegan for like a whole month.”

He didn’t play much for the Mavericks last season and, when he did, he was ineffective. No one offered him a guaranteed contract this past offseason. He was down.

“I’d be thinking: ‘Is this my last run? Am I never going to play basketball again?'” McGee said. “I just kept with it. I don’t know nothing else. I’d rather get a minimum contracts — I mean, $1.4 million is a lot of money to an average person — so why wouldn’t you keep playing? I wasn’t hurting that bad.”

The non-guaranteed training camp invite came from the Warriors. McGee accepted. He’d spent all summer getting himself in great shape. He arrived motivated. He blocked five shots on the first day of practice. “We knew three days in (we were going to keep him),” Kerr said.

The situation proved perfect. The Warriors had a laid-back environment, which jived with McGee, and — despite a loaded roster with four Hall of Famers — plenty of available minutes at the center spot. There was all this passing ability and no center to toss a lob. McGee became that.

McGee worked with Ron Adams and Jarron Collins on his pick-and-roll defense, which has improved, and he kept working on his weight and health. McGee became a pescatarian, but stopped because “I got scared of mercury poisoning.” He started eating chicken instead, but has stopped. He’s vegan again now, which, he says, is “very easy” in the Bay Area.

“There’s a lot of vegan spots, vegan soul spots,” McGee said. “It (makes it) easy for me to get up and down the court.”

The rest of the playoffs could change things. The money likely won’t be the same. But the partnership works on many levels and, McGee says, he’d like to be back next season.

“Hell yeah,” McGee said. “But it’s the NBA, so anything can happen. Really: Anything. It’s crazy.”

Even the complete career revival of JaVale McGee.