Over the next few days, the Bay Area News Group will examine what went right, what went wrong and the biggest offseason questions for each of the Warriors players. Next up is Draymond Green, who showed he can still anchor one of the NBA’s best defenses.
What went right
A look comparing Draymond Green’s stats from a year ago to this past season won’t reveal much about the difference in his impact. During the Warriors’ 15-win 2019-20 season, he averaged 8.0 points, 6.2 rebounds and 6.2 assists. During this past season, when Golden State came within a game of the playoffs, Green averaged 7.0 points, 7.1 rebounds and 8.9 assists.
The advanced metrics do a better job. Pull up any of the most-cited mumbo-jumbo and there’s a clear improvement. In ESPN’s real plus-minus, Green went from a .7 rating to 1.16. According to Basketball-Reference’s VORP (value over replacement-level player), Green went from 0.6 to 1.8.
Without getting into what, exactly, all of that means, just know it means Green was basically twice as impactful this past season and just as good as he was during the Warriors’ last Finals run in 2019.
Prime Green — the one of royally messes up the opponent’s actions on offense and runs Golden State’s offense with precision — was back. He averaged the most steals (1.7) since leading the league in the stat and winning Defensive Player of the Year in 2017. He ranked 12th in the NBA in deflections and fifth among forwards in contested shots. Green this season was a finalist for Defensive Player of the Year and named to the NBA’s All-Defense first team.
As he said in May, he “can (expletive) every team’s offense up again.”
What went wrong
While Green showed that 2019-20 campaign was an anomaly — one caused by the fact that the Warriors weren’t competitive, and Green is a player who needs stakes — the same things that limited Green in the past have not gone away.
He’s still a lousy 3-point shooter. He made just 27% of his 126 attempts this season, and he’s now failed to make a third of his 3-pointers for five straight years.
This is nothing new. Despite looking like he shoots with Yoda hanging on his back, Green has managed to score by slipping out of screens and pressuring defenses in the paint. But as his athleticism begins to wane, so has his willingness to call his own number. His 6.0 field goal attempts per game were the fewest since becoming a full-time starter in 2014. He often ignored even wide-open looks at the basket, deciding instead to force-feed Curry or another teammate.
It’s OK to get Curry the ball in any circumstance, but Kelly Oubre Jr.? Sometimes, Green wouldn’t even look at the rim. Defenses picked up on it and ignored him in order to crowd the paint and teammates.
During exit interviews, GM Bob Myers and coach Steve Kerr told Green he needs to score more, or at least get up shots. Possessions like the one above, where he eliminates himself as a scoring threat, won’t help the Warriors return to the playoffs. Green is a next-level passer — one of the best ever at his position. But he needs to strike a balance between being too unselfish and getting his own shot for the greater good.
Biggest offseason question: How involved will Green be?
The last time Green spoke to media after the Warriors were eliminated by the Grizzlies in the final game of the play-in tournament, he made it clear that he’d be involved in Golden State’s offseason. As a guest analyst on TNT a few weeks later, he discussed how the Wizards can’t surround All-Stars Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook with 19- and 20-year-olds — a nudge to his own front office that was either not as subtle or exactly as obvious as he intended.
When asked this week, Kerr told the Bay Area News Group, “There’s no question that we’re all on the same page in terms of putting our heads together… We definitely want Steph and Draymond and Klay involved in those things.”
So the question isn’t whether or not Green will be involved, but rather what he (and Curry and Thompson) will ask for, and if the front office will listen.
Owner Joe Lacob has made it clear he wants to build for the future while trying to win now. What’s not as clear is if the organization — after missing the playoffs for the second straight season and given the rocky start to James Wiseman’s career — has succeeded in either.
To go back to Green’s comments on TNT, “Getting draft picks and placing them next to two all-stars? That don’t work.”
It’s obvious that Green and this core prefers to play with people close to their own age. The Warriors have a $5.9 million mid-level exception and can offer any number of veterans minimum contracts, but they will also have as many as two lottery picks in the upcoming draft. How they will use that capital, and how much weight they’ll put into Green’s input, remains to be seen.
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