Andre the Pliant

Iguodala has mind/body connection on court, yoga mat

OAKLAND>> In deconstructing the Warriors’ only loss of the first round, Steve Kerr spoke in the language of coaches, lamenting the team’s lack of energy and focus.

Then he picked a word straight off the yoga mat. “I don’t think we played

mindfully,” he said, “and that has to change.”

Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing on awareness in the present moment. That’s pretty fancy talk for a team now banging around with power forward Anthony Davis and the New Orleans Pelicans. Game 2 is set for Tuesday night at Oracle Arena.

But Kerr, a yoga devotee, teaches the Warriors that they are at their best when they are able to play “without getting in their mind’s way.”

When it works, their flowing offense becomes a moving meditation.

“It’s something we talk about: the mind/body connection,” Kerr said after a recent practice. “You have to physically get out there and perform, but it has to be connected to strategy and purpose. Mindfulness is all about performing at your peak.”

It is no coincidence, then, that while Stephen Curry was out, Kerr put the point guard role into the hands of Andre Iguodala, the team’s leader in Namaste. Curry is expected back Tuesday night, with the Warriors up 1-0, but it’s worth saluting the steady hand Iguodala provided in his absence. After starting only seven times during the regular season, Iguodala started the first six playoff games and averaged 8.3 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.5 assists and less than a turnover per game (0.8). His solid production allowed the Warriors to allow Curry as much time as he needed — and then some — to recover from a sprained MCL.

There’s a reason Iguodala was ready. For him, playing extra minutes wasn’t exactly a stretch.

A few years ago, as Iguodala approached basketball old age, the 6-foot-6 swing man approached Warriors head performance therapist Chelsea Lane with the idea of incorporating yoga into his training.

Iguodala, now 34, asked Lane if she knew someone who could help and, as it turned out, the answer was right down the hall. Lisa Goodwin, the Warriors’ senior director of corporate communications, has a second life as an instructor for Core Power Yoga in Walnut Creek.

Over the past few years, she’s tutored Kerr, Curry, Zaza Pachulia and other Warriors, either one-on-one or in a group setting. But no player took to the vinyasastyle practice quite like Iguodala, who is so grateful for the benefits that he wound up thanking Goodwin by name during last year’s NBA Finals victory parade.

Think of him as Andre the Pliant.

“His body awareness is incredible. Incredible,” Goodwin said. “So I can cue him into something, and it could be a pose he’s never done before. And when we do it again, he’s in the pose exactly how I asked him to be.”

Iguodala dabbled in yoga years earlier but sought it out this time as a body-maintenance program. Since October of 2016, early into his 13th NBA season, Iguodala and Goodwin have been meeting for 60-minute sessions, sometimes twice a week.

“It’s to keep my sanity,” Iguodala joked last Monday. “That’s more helpful than anything.”

Goodwin, who grew up in Novato and played shooting guard for Colgate University, credits Iguodala for embracing yoga with the right mindset.

“Being kind of vulnerable in that situation is not easy,” Goodwin said. “Many people say, ‘Oh, I’d come but I’m not flexible enough!’ or ‘I’m too embarrassed.’ These are professional athletes doing that, so it’s tricky.”

Iguodala plays down his yoga skills, but a video diary he did for TNT in February showed him doing a perfect Astavakrasana — also known as an “eightangle pose.” With hands on the floor in a push-up position, he swiveled his legs on a horizontal plane to his right so that not one bit of his 6-foot-6, 215-pound frame rose any higher than a fire hydrant.

“He’s twisty,” Goodwin said, “... there are so many poses where it’s like, ‘Thanks. You just did a perfect yoga pose.’”

Iguodala still struggles at times, and he backed off yoga for a spell this season as he dealt with an array of minor injuries (left knee soreness that kept him out for six games).

But even when limited physically, the mindfulness concept was at the center of his after-practice sessions with Goodwin.

“This is going to sound very yoga-y,” she said. “But I remember the moment it became more than just physical to him. It was like our fourth session, it was very early, and the energy was changed in the room between him and I.

“I just felt him release and finally let him go and be thinking, ‘I’m going to get into this pose and do what she says.’ He was easing into poses with his body while his mind got there, and he was breathing properly.”

Goodwin has also done numerous one-on-one sessions with Curry. In fact, after the Warriors finished off the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals last year, the two celebrated in the raucous locker room by holding a bottle of Champagne in the “tree” pose.

Kerr asked Goodwin to lead a mandatory teamwide session in January of 2017, trading away on-court practice time to spend an hour or so doing downward-facing dogs and Chaturangas.

Iguodala, Curry and Pachuilia thrived that day. Draymond Green, the pride of Flint, Michigan, most certainly did not.

“I’m bad,” he told the Associated Press. “I just don’t think my body is made for all of those different positions.”

But Iguodala, the second oldest player on the roster (three years behind David West, 37), echoed Kerr by saying it’s not about the body, anyway.

“It’s the mental training,” Iguodala said. “Yoga helps me with basketball, but it helps me outside of it more than anything.”

The Warriors bounced back from that Game 4 loss by finishing off the Spurs two nights later. Iguodala didn’t exactly play lights out, but he helped set the tone for a more cohesive — more connected — night.

In Game 1 against the Pelicans, Iguodala was plus-11 during his 24 minutes on the floor.

Thanks to his play in Curry’s absence, the Warriors could take a deep breath and exhale.