Draymond Green’s Case For Defensive Player Of The Year

Draymond Green is brash and controversial, and he’s also been the premier defender in the NBA all season long.

Lots of people don’t like Draymond Green. Draymond is never afraid to say what’s on his mind, and he’s been accused of making some less than clean plays on the basketball floor in his time as a starter with the Golden State Warriors.

Green may be one of the top all-time guys you’d love to have on your team, but hate to have go up against. Most fans outside of the Bay Area aren’t very fond of his antics and attitude, but Warriors fans seem to have no problem with their defensive dynamo.

Draymond’s defense is what makes him who he is, and the Warriors who they are. Golden State’s high-flying offense is undeniably great, but over the past three seasons the Warriors have been ranked second, fifth and first in defensive rating.

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How important really is defense to a team like the Warriors? The 2015-16 Warriors set the regular season record for games won with 73 victories, and scored 114.5 points per 100 possessions. The 2016-17 Houston Rockets are third in their conference, and they scored 114.7 points per 100 possessions.

The difference is the defense. The Rockets allowed teams to score 109.0 points per 100 possessions, which is a bottom-half mark this season. The 2015-16 Dubs gave up 103.8 points per 100 possessions on defense, which was fifth-best in the association.

That team had the benefit of having a stout defensive center in Andrew Bogut, but Bogut only played 1,451 minutes across 70 games. Draymond Green, on the other hand, played in 81 games and led the record-setting Dubs with 2,808 minutes played.

This season Bogut is gone, and the Warriors were essentially the same defensively. They’re giving up 104.0 points per 100 possessions, but with more teams boasting blazing offenses that’s the second-best mark in the NBA.

Stephen Curry is one of the best offensive players in the NBA, but he’s not exactly a defensive stopper. Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant are both plus defenders, but Durant has missed 20 games this season and Klay can’t anchor a defense by himself.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to. Draymond’s presence on the floor caused the Warriors to play defense at a higher level than any single team in the NBA has this season. With Green on the floor, the Dubs allowed just 99.3 points per 100 possessions this season.

Without him out there, Golden State allowed over 104 points per 100 possessions. That’s by far the worst the Dubs got on defense for any one player not being on the floor, and their defense with Green was better than it is with any one player on the floor aside from David West, who played over a fourth of his total minutes this season with Draymond.

To put those numbers in perspective against the rest of the NBA, the league-leading San Antonio Spurs allowed 100.9 points to be scored per 100 possessions. The Warriors with Draymond were a full point per 100 possessions better.

It may not be completely fair to compare Draymond’s impact on the Warriors against the entire season numbers of other teams. It turns out he compared pretty favorably against other top Defensive Player of the Year candidates as far as their impact on team defensive rating goes.

The Warriors allowed 99.3 points per 100 possessions with Draymond on the floor. That’s lower than the marks either of the other top DPOY candidates allowed, as the Spurs gave up 104.0 points per 100 possessions with Kawhi Leonard on the floor and the Utah Jazz gave up 100.6 points per 100 possessions with Rudy Gobert playing.

One number doesn’t tell the story, but Draymond Green makes the Warriors stingier on defense than Gobert makes the Jazz or Kawhi makes the Spurs. Kawhi may well be the NBA’s best one-on-one defender and Gobert likely is the association’s premier rim protector, but neither of them offer the versatility that Draymond does.

Mar 31, 2017; Oakland, CA, USA; Houston Rockets center Clint Capela (15) drives to the basket past Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green (23) during the first quarter against at Oracle Arena. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-USA TODAY Sports

Green can capably guard any player, from a point guard to a center. His ability to move freely on defense to wherever he needs to takes pressure off of every other Warrior on defense, and makes it impossible for teams to isolate him.

One of Gobert’s few defensive weaknesses is when teams go small against him and the Jazz. Gobert is a monster at the rim, but he can’t keep up with perimeter players like Draymond can, and taking him away from the rim makes it harder for him to protect the painted area.

The same sort of thing has happened to Kawhi Leonard this season. As detailed by Matt Moore in his piece on why Kawhi’s advanced metrics on defense are, shockingly, bad this season, some opponents have just let the player being guarded by Kawhi sit in the corner and play a four-on-four game on offense.

Green and the Warriors switch too much for that to work well. Draymond Green is the best defensive player in the NBA because he can combine the suffocating one-on-one defense Kawhi plays with the ability to help out his teammates like Gobert does, across all five positions.

In this clip shared by the Warriors in their campaign to get Green his first Defensive Player of the Year award, there are plenty examples of Draymond guarding just about everybody, both in help defense situations and when he’s matched up with them individually.

https://twitter.com/warriors/status/852313898526965760

Although Green stands at somewhere around 6’7″, his seven-foot-long arms allow him to defend the rim and block shots like a center. The combination of a somewhat short height and such long arms mean Draymond can hang with the guards, but get up to contest just about anybody’s shot.

Those arms also allow Green to be disruptive in passing lanes. He tallied enough total blocks and steals to be among the 11 best NBA players in both statistics, whereas Kawhi was outside the top 20 in blocks and Gobert was outside the top 20 in steals.

Green recorded 260 combined steals and blocks over the course of the season, and it’s a fair bet to assume many if not most of those led to the Warriors getting good looks on offense on the other end.

The best attribute that Green has going for him is his defensive instincts. Good defense isn’t really something you can teach, even though it takes hours and hours of practice. The best defenders just have a sense of exactly when and how to help, and when not to leave their assignment.

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A combination of inherent defensive intellect and hours upon hours of film study means that Green almost never gets caught out of position. He puts himself in the right place at the right time to stop opposing offenses from doing much of anything when he’s on the floor.

There are other cases to make for Draymond Green’s greatness, such as his flexibility allowing the Warriors’ lineup of death to function, but since that case relies on what he can do offensively it really shouldn’t matter much for this argument.

In a season where offenses have functioned at an extremely high level, Draymond Green has led a thin Warriors team to be one of the NBA’s elite defensive units, again. His ability to do most, if not all, of what every other great defender can do makes him an even better defender than his contemporaries, because that versatility means Draymond is unavoidable on the defensive end.

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That versatility and defensive excellence should be enough for Draymond to win his first-ever Defensive Player of the Year award. There are ways to lessen the impact of Gobert and Kawhi, but there’s nothing to be done about Draymond Green.