SAN FRANCISCO — Draymond Green seems primed to finish his Hall-of-Fame career having one just a single Defensive Player of the Year award. It's been six-and-a-half seasons since the Golden State Warriors star raised the trophy as the NBA's top defender in 2017, a reality detractors would paint as a chink in Green's loudly self-proclaimed status as the greatest defensive player of his generation.
Anyone who's kept a close eye on the Dubs since then, though, understands full well just how dominant Green has always been and remains on that side of the ball. In wake of the Warriors' blow out win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night at Chase Center, Steve Kerr explained to reporters that it's Green who decides his nightly defensive role, not the coaching staff.
“He’s a savant. He has an incredible defensive mind,” Kerr said of Green.
“From game-to-game, Draymond just has a good sense of what he needs to do to help us win. Against Milwaukee, he felt like it was best to start on Giannis [Antetokounmpo] for him to start,” he continued. “A lot of games, he loves being the centerfielder, just playing off the main guys so he can plug up gaps. It’s just different from game-to-game.”
Draymond Green's doomed Defensive Player of the Year case for 2023-24
Green's matchup versatility defensively separates him from pretty much every NBA player in the 2010s and beyond. That's hardly a secret. He's still capable of checking all five positions on the floor at an impactful level, peerless ability that helped drive the league's collective embrace of small-ball after Golden State won its first title in 2015.
But the notion that Green's historic defensive prowess is best distilled by his exploits as a one-on-one defender broadly misses the point. His comfort guarding one-through-five is a defining aspect of the Dubs' dynasty and indeed changed league-wide defensive strategy and lineup configurations forever.
It's Green's tandem and ever-looming influence as a help defender that also makes him truly unique defensively, allowing Golden State a decade of variable stylistic flexibility on that end of the floor no other team has been able to match. If Kevin Garnett isn't the NBA's most disruptive post-merger help defender and on-court organizer, that distinction belongs to Green.
This season's Defensive Player of the Year race is basically already over. Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert will be a deserving recipient, joining Ben Wallace and Dikembe Mutombo as the only players ever to win the award four times. Green is highly unlikely to even finish top-five in the voting. Don't take that seemingly inevitable standing as any indication he's taken a step back defensively in his mid-30s, however.
The lowly Detroit Pistons were the only team in basketball with a worse defensive rating than the Warriors' 123.8 during Green's indefinite suspension and subsequent ramp-up process. He wasn't on the floor for that disastrous 16-game stretch, but Green owns that porous defense regardless. The Dubs' roster was built around Green's singular defensive presence, and he wasn't there to provide it through no fault of anyone's save his own.
Since Green returned from his time away and Kerr made him Golden State's full-time starting center, though? His case as the NBA's best defender is as strong as Gobert's season-long resumé for Defensive Player of the Year. The Warriors sport a 109.4 defensive rating over that timeframe, second behind the Timberwolves' ridiculously stingy league-low mark. They've been even stingier with Green in the game, surrendering just 107.8 points per 100 possessions.
Many, many factors have accounted for Golden State's stunning midseason turnaround, Green's return from suspension perhaps chief among them. But for all the difference he's made as a playmaker, screener, transition engine and emotional tone-setter, it's what Green has done to the Dubs' defense that's loomed largest—no surprise given his well-earned status as one of the greatest defenders ever.
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