Making his case
The Warriors’ Draymond Green says his ability to lock down any player makes him defensive player of the year,
Draymond Green is nothing if not unplugged.
Not to mention occasionally unhinged.
Luckily for the Golden State Warriors, their 27-year-old, twotime All-Star forward is more than that: defender, playmaker, scorer and fiery leader for the team that has the league’s top record, even with Kevin Durant sidelined.
But as the Warriors play a brutal stretch against playoff teams — Tuesday at Houston, Wednesday at San Antonio, Friday vs. Houston, Sunday vs. Washington — the timing seems right to hand Green the microphone on a specific matter: his three-year push to win the league’s defensive player of the year award.
From his childhood in Saginaw, Mich., spent listening to his first defensive coach — his uncle, Benny Babers — to evenings watching the Detroit Pistons to his four years with coach Tom Izzo at Michigan State, Green has defined himself as a defender.
So, yes, he cares deeply about this award.
“Coming into the league, I knew that if I wanted to get on the floor, it had to be defense,” Green, the 35th pick in the 2012 draft, said last week. “There are a million ways to affect the game. But we all know that you can’t win without this defensive end of the ball, so just really understanding that and watching all those teams (growing up), the successful teams like the Pistons teams, a successful program like Michigan State, it’s all based on the defensive end.”
Yet few awards are more of an inexact science than defensive player of the year. The days of blocked shots, rebounds and steals serving as the total statistical analysis have passed. Analytics paint a much clearer picture of defensive impact. But there’s still no stat to gauge heart or effort or pride.
If Green had to argue why he — not Utah big man Rudy Gobert or back-to-back winner Kawhi Leonard of San Antonio — should finally be seen as the NBA’s top defender, how would he justify it?
“I think when you’re looking at it, you’re looking at numbers; you’re looking at the eye test; I think you’re looking at wins and losses; I think you’re judging all those things. You’re looking at how a team is when a guy is on the floor as opposed to how they are when a guy is off the floor. I think you’re looking at how a guy can control or alter or changes games or win games from that side of the floor.
“You can block shots (Gobert leads the league at 2.61 per game). That doesn’t mean you’re dominating a game. You can get steals (Green leads the league at 2.09 per game; Leonard is sixth at 1.83). That doesn’t mean you’re dominating a game. But there are some numbers that just don’t lie. When you start looking at plusminus, and all the stuff like that, percentages of guys being scored on — at what percent are they stopping their guy? How are they helping the defense, their (defensive) ratings? ... With all this stuff now that we can judge, and advanced metrics now and all these different things, I think they all help.”
Green has the momentum in this race for three reasons:
uThe Warriors are on the heels of the Spurs for the top defensive rating (101 points allowed per 100 possessions vs. 100.7) and have been even better since Durant went down with his left knee injury (99.8 in those 13 games). Considering Durant was the Warriors’ best rim protector, this reflects well on Green.
uOf all the numbers that carry weight in the defensive debate, the on-off figure is impossible to ignore because of what it reflects: team success, or failure, when a particular player is on the floor. This is where the debate gets downright strange because one of these stats doesn’t look right.
The Warriors allow 6.2 fewer points per 100 possessions with Green on the floor, and the Jazz allow seven points per 100 fewer with Gobert, but the Spurs allow 7.9 points more per 100 when Leonard is playing. Regardless of how you explain it, there’s simply no way it helps Leonard’s case for a third consecutive DPOY honor.
uWith teams shooting from three-point range at an unprecedented rate and the small-ball phenomenon demanding that multiple defenders guard multiple positions, Green is the perfect prototype.
“No disrespect, but I think when you look at today’s game, the object is to actually stop the three, as opposed to not giving up a two,” Green said.
“Like I said, Rudy is great at what he does, and I think he has changed games. But I think this is a guard-heavy league and being able to switch onto guards and being able to defend one through five, just being able to play no matter who’s out there on the floor, and you’re not at a disadvantage, I think it helps.”