Draymond Green's Impact on Warriors May Change Definition of NBA's Top Defender
If early returns are any indication, the Golden State Warriors' Draymond Green will beat out Los Angeles Clippers center DeAndre Jordan for NBA Defensive Player of the Year, which would represent either a watershed moment or a once-every-decade quirk in how the award is selected.
If Green wins, it clearly won't be based on the statistics that traditionally have determined the award, which, surveying the last decade of winners, is a combination of blocked shots and rebounds by the individual for a team that finished among the top five in fewest points allowed.
It will be because Green was the most indispensable element to the league's most efficient defense. This is an upset of sorts, seeing as Jordan has the more typical resume: league leader in rebounds, fourth in blocked shots.
The only gap for Jordan is that the Clippers collectively were not that good defensively (10th in defensive field-goal percentage, 15th in points allowed per 100 possessions). Then again, that didn't prevent Tyson Chandler from winning the award with the Knicks three years ago, the premise being that Chandler's presence lifted one of the league's bottom-five defenses the previous year into the top 10.
Green, on the other hand, is not among the league's top 20 rebounders or shot-blockers. He is also 19th in steals, the other statistic that voters have often equated with defensive prowess. He's not even the top shot-blocker on his team—that title belongs to center Andrew Bogut.
"DeAndre has got the better all-around so-called numbers," said one Eastern Conference executive. "Draymond's the better all-around defender."
The qualifier "so-called" is because rebounds, as one former big man and now playoff-bound assistant coach noted, aren't necessarily a measure of defense. In fact, as Dennis Rodman demonstrated in his later years, a player who lingers around the basket looking to bolster his rebounding average rather than rotating out to a shooter as the team's defensive scheme plan intends is undermining it. Steals can represent the same self-interested and team-crippling approach.
That is where Green has clearly separated himself this season. His ability and willingness to hedge hard on pick-and-rolls no matter how far from the basket that may take him, to sacrifice his body boxing out far bigger opponents and to make some of the league's top-scoring forwards fight to gain every inch in the direction of their sweet spot served as the linchpin for the league's best team defense by every metric.
"You have to game-plan for Draymond," the assistant coach said. "He's their motor, their vocal leader, and he guards multiple positions. How many guys can you say that about in the league?"
Strictly by the appearances of its narrower scope, identifying the league's best defender should be infinitely easier than selecting, say, the Most Valuable Player. But actually, it's infinitely harder by virtue of the fact that every position has different responsibilities. Good luck comparing the value of a great defensive point guard versus that of a good defensive center.
The natural reflex is to side with the big man, seeing as he is the last line of defense and can cover for mistakes made by his teammates, often in dramatic fashion. The history of the award certainly reflects that: only seven non-power forwards/centers have been named DPOY in its 32-year history. It's been a decade since the last non-big man, Indiana Pacers small forward Ron Artest, took home the honor.
Green's value, much like Artest's, is in his versatility. He was the team's starting power forward this season, but both ESPN.com and Basketball-Reference.com still identify him as a small forward, no doubt because that's what he was labeled coming into the league and because of his size: 6'7" and 230 pounds, classic small forward dimensions.
To be fair, Jordan is for the Clippers nearly everything Green is for the Warriors: the fire starter as far as energy is concerned and defensive quarterback when it comes to barking out coverages and reads.
For that reason, the ability to force Jordan off the floor and rob the Clippers of their defensive general has to be taken into consideration. Opponents do that by simply putting him on the free-throw line, where he shot 39.7 percent this season. Coach Doc Rivers had the unenviable choice of scoring, at best, four points every five possessions or taking his defensive backbone off the floor.
"You had to game-plan for him when he was on the floor, for sure," the assistant coach said of Jordan. "You take it into the lane, you tell your guards to drop it off, and you tell your bigs to be ready. You also tell your bigs not to hold the ball, to make it move. But we'd game-plan for the fact he can't make free throws as well. He's an unbelievable shot-blocker, but what good is that if he's on the bench?"
Green actually played the opposite role. Partly to preserve Bogut's health and partly because his free-throw shooting is marginally better than the Australian's, Green closed out the majority of Golden State's games as the Warriors' big man in Bogut's stead.
Free-throw shooting percentage, be it Jordan's or Green's (or Bogut's), probably won't be the deciding factor on most ballots. There's a good chance, though, that their respective defensive statistics won't be, either. Could this be the year a new DPOY formula is established, i.e., the best defender on the best defense? Or is Green merely this decade's Artest or Michael Cooper? The next few years will tell.
Advanced stats courtesy of NBA.com.
Ric Bucher covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @RicBucher.
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