Wallace put the ‘d’ in idol for Green
Draymond Green wanted to be like his idol, Pistons center Ben Wallace.
But because Green was a pudgy middle-school student, he couldn’t yet emulate Wallace’s chiseled frame or relentless defense. Green settled for the next best thing: a huge Afro reminiscent of the black mane flowing from Wallace’s blue and red headbands.
Today, more than a decade after trading his Afro for a buzz cut, Green wants to be even more like Wallace. Green is one of the best defenders in the league, but Wallace is one of only two players in NBA history to have won the Defensive Player of the Year Award four times (Dikembe Mutombo is the other).
“He’s still got to win at least
three more Defensive Player of the Years to get on my defensive level,” Wallace said of Green, who took home the award for the first time in June. “Only then can he talk.”
As a kid growing up in Saginaw, Mich., roughly 70 miles north of the Palace of Auburn Hills, Green seldom missed a Pistons game on TV. During fifth grade, he became mystified by the muscle-bound big man with the disco-era hairdo. At 6-foot-9, 240 pounds, Wallace was routinely swatting the shots of much taller players.
Two years later, Green accompanied his AAU teammate, Jordan Dumars — son of thenDetroit general manager Joe Dumars — to a Pistons home game. In the locker room afterward, Green met his favorite player. Wallace was struck by the fact that, instead of asking for an autograph, Green wanted to know how Wallace became such a dominant defender.
Undrafted out of Division II Virginia Union in 1996, Wallace had tried out for an Italian team before finding his footing in the NBA as a low-post enforcer. What he lacked in size or skill he made up for in unyielding will. In that home locker room in Auburn Hills, Wallace told Green: “With hard work, anything is possible.”
“You never know what type of impact you have on a kid’s life, man,” Wallace said recently. “It just makes me feel good to know that he actually got it, you know? Some kids, they want to run off and do their own thing. But he stuck to the script, and he actually understood what I was talking about.”
Throughout high school and college, Green kept in touch with Wallace. The phone calls only increased when Green, a 6-7 second-round pick out of Michigan State, was anchored to the Warriors’ bench as a rookie.
As the league shifted to more switch-heavy schemes, Green’s ability to guard all five positions helped him get on the floor. Now, as he enters his sixth year in the NBA, Green is the emotional leader of an elite Golden State defense.
This is a player who last season posted the first tripledouble in NBA history without double-digit points and made five defensive plays in the last minute of one-possession games that helped seal victories. Though far more versatile than Wallace, Green shares his dogged desire.
“When you’re undersized, you need to have even more emotion,” Green said. “That’s something (Wallace) had. Watching him as a kid, I could see that he just wanted it more than everybody else.”
On Jan. 15, 2016, the Detroit Free Press published an editorial in which Green detailed what Wallace meant to him as a kid. A day later, with Green watching from the visitors’ bench, Wallace’s No. 3 jersey was retired at the Palace of Auburn Hills.
Two weeks ago, in the leadup to the Warriors’ preseason opener, vice president of communications Raymond Ridder told Green that he had a surprise in store. Green’s curiosity only mounted during warmups when team broadcaster Bob Fitzgerald pointed cryptically toward midcourt.
Moments before tip-off, Wallace, with the 2016-17 Defensive Player of the Year Award in hand, sauntered to the floor. Mentor and pupil embraced at midcourt. Before handing the award to Green, Wallace whispered: “I pulled one of my DPOY trophies off the wall for you.”
As he chuckled, Green posed for pictures with the man who once inspired him to grow an Afro.
“For him to hand me that trophy,” Green said, “it meant a lot.”