Where do Draymond Green and Klay Thompson rank among NBA duos?

Klay Thompson and Draymond Green are universally seen as the third- and fourth-best players on the Golden State Warriors. But where would they rank as a duo if they had their own team?

It is widely acknowledged that the Golden State Warriors would not be the all-time team they are without four elite players. At the same time, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant are good enough to lead a historical juggernaut without other stars.

As a result, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green have entered a strange space between being seen as superstars and as role players. Thompson is often called the best shooting guard after James Harden, even though his game is seen as more similar to that of Danny Green.

The Warriors’ Green is widely known as the team’s emotional hub, a versatile offense player and possibly the best defender in the world. Teams also sag off him like he’s Andre Roberson or Tony Allen.

Paradoxical as this may seem, it really is not. What makes the Warriors the Warriors is that Thompson and Green each have the talent and the humility to have a superstar-level impact in a complementary-sized role.

Thompson is fourth on the Warriors in touches (47.1 per game, per NBA.com) and sixth in time of possession (1.8 minutes per game), yet he is first in points per touch (0.428). The only guy in the league with as many touches as Thompson and more points per touch is Kristaps Porzingis.

Green takes less than half the shots of Curry, Durant or Thompson, yet leads all power forwards in RPM, just ahead of Anthony Davis, Al Horford and Giannis Antetokounmpo. RPM can be flukey year-to-year, but the only guys besides Green to finish in the top 10 each season since 2014-15 are MVP types: Curry, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook.

Outside of volume scoring, Thompson and Green are statistically elite. In fact, the only higher-usage duos that can compete in terms of efficiency and two-way impact are Curry and Durant, Harden and Paul, Davis and DeMarcus Cousins and Russell Westbrook and Paul George.

That doesn’t automatically make Thompson and Green the league’s No. 5 duo, of course.

Defining the field

Outside of six games during the 2015-16 playoffs, we have not seen Thompson and Green carry a team as its two best players. John Wall and Bradley Beal have done so, as have Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, Mike Conley and Marc Gasol and Kyrie Irving and Al Horford.

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One could argue that Jimmy Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns have had success already. The same could be said for Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. James and Isaiah Thomas almost certainly will, health permitting.

Thompson and Green are better defensively than all of these pairings. They edge some by a little (Conley and Gasol), and some by a lot (Lillard and McCollum). At the same time, every other duo has something Thompson and Green do not: At least one elite lead ball-handler and at least one elite shot-creator.

As great a passer as Green is in transition and on the drive, he cannot create out of the pick-and-roll. The same is true for Thompson, who thrives as a cutter, coming off screens and attacking mismatches, but struggles to break down defenders or get to the line.

This does not automatically make them the worst of these duos. If it did, then Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum would also be a better pairing, as would Dennis Schröder and Kent Bazemore. Still, it is nearly impossible to build a top-10 offense without a high-level creator.

Placing Klay and Dray

So where do Thompson and Green, the best defensive pairing and worst offensive pairing in the group we’ve identified, rank?

Conley and Gasol are close enough on defense for their offense to push them ahead. The same is true for Wall and Beal, who are elite offensively and can reach a solid defensive level.

Lillard and McCollum have been a part of the Blazers’ No. 2 defense this season, but the sample is almost as small as the one where the Thompson and Green, sans Curry, won two out of three playoff games against Portland in 2016. Building a consistent defense around these two undersized guards requires far more theatrics in roster construction than building a consistent offense around Thompson and Green.

Lowry and DeRozan are difficult. Save for their 2014-15 defense, the Raptors have been top-11 in both offense and defense in each of the last five years. At the same time, the duo’s limitations have been exposed every spring. DeRozan needs massive usage to be effective and relies a ton on drawing fouls, making him an easy postseason assignment. This forces Lowry into a higher-pressure role, which he does not quite have the body or skill level for. He’s a good defender, but not against elite point guards, and DeRozan is always bad on that end.

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In contrast, everything Thompson and Green do during the regular season translates beautifully to the playoffs. When the whistles get put away, the non-shooters are abandoned, the coasting defenders lock in and the bad teams are weeded out, the ability to be efficient on difficult shots becomes increasingly important. Thompson’s height, release speed and accuracy from 3 overcame the devastating 2016 Thunder defense in a way that neither Lowry nor DeRozan ever would be able to.

As for Green, the defensive destruction he can cause is ramped up in the postseason due to increased minutes at center. The same is true for Thompson, who thrives as an isolation defender but struggles in transition. Playoff defense is far more about the former than the latter.

That leaves Irving-Horford, Simmons-Embiid, Butler-Towns and James-Thomas.

We need to cross off that last one. We haven’t seen much of any of these new pairings yet, but at least we’ve seen them. We don’t even know who Thomas is as a basketball player anymore, let alone how that player will pair with James.

Butler is a far more dynamic creator than Thompson, and Towns is miles better than Green as a scorer. However, a Towns-led team is destined to be as bad defensively as a Green-led team is destined to be good. And for everything Butler can do offensively, he is essentially a rich man’s DeRozan, still stuck between needing the ball to be effective and not being effective enough with it to win in the playoffs.

Simmons and Embiid may be the only duo outside of the top four (Curry-Durant, Harden-Paul, Davis-Cousins, Westbrook-George) that can match Thompson and Green in terms of pure talent, defensive ability and offensive upside. However, it remains to be seen if Embiid can make it through even half a season, and if Simmons — who has magically rendered his completely broken shot irrelevant thus far — will become a pumpkin in the playoffs.

Irving and Horford are the most fascinating comparison of all. In just over a month, they have proven that they can be the two best players on an elite team. They have proven that they have terrific chemistry and can get their teammates involved.

Here’s the problem: It is too early to know where to assign credit. Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Marcus Smart, Marcus Morris, Terry Rozier and Aron Baynes have been sensational as a supporting cast. Put that group with Thompson and Green (swapping one of the wings for a comparable point guard), and that team may be just as devastating, if not more so.

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Boston is No. 1 in defense and No. 20 in offense. Many expect the offense to come around, but Horford, Brown and Tatum are all shooting unsustainably well from 3-point range. If anything, they might regress.

Thompson and Green are a vastly superior defensive duo, and should be able to lead a team to 20th in offense (though we do not know it). Despite Irving’s postseason resume, we’ve actually seen more from Thompson as a fulcrum than we have from Irving, who has not played a single playoff game without James.

This could all change this spring. Irving and Horford could reach another level. James and Thomas could also ransack the East even more rapidly than James and Irving ever did. Embiid and Simmons could prove they are for real and ascend to the top tier of duos, while Butler may find his offense and Towns his defense.

As we learn about these other pairings, Thompson and Green will likely remain theoretical. Perhaps they would prove to be worse than all of these duos when burdened with leading a team, or maybe their current consensus talent level — both are seen as top-15 players — would put them above even Wall-Beal and Conley-Gasol.

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Given what we can ascertain, they appear to be the league’s seventh-best duo. And while we don’t know what they would do without Curry and Durant, we do know that none of these other duos would do what Thompson and Green can do with their MVP teammates.