Zach Lowe on Draymond Green (ESPN+)

[https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/\_/id/34934904/lowe-draymond-green-superstar-own-beneficiary-perfect-system-golden-state](https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/34934904/lowe-draymond-green-superstar-own-beneficiary-perfect-system-golden-state)

>**AS THE 3-5** [Golden State Warriors](https://www.espn.com/nba/team/_/name/gs/golden-state-warriors) transition eras in real time, missteps and all, it has been hard not to imagine what this team would be like without [Draymond Green](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/6589/draymond-green) \– and the forms it might have taken had they never discovered his greatness.
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>The Warriors held both the 30th and 35th picks in the 2012 draft, and had their choice of Green and Festus Ezeli at No. 30. They picked Ezeli. “We decided we had to get a center first,” Kirk Lacob, now the team’s executive vice president of basketball operations, told me during the 2015 NBA Finals. “I was confident Draymond would still be there at No. 35. He’s a four-year player, he’s short, he’s slow. He was going to slip.”
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>Before that first championship season — Green’s third in the NBA — Steve Kerr had Green penciled in for 10 to 12 minutes as David Lee’s backup. Then Lee suffered a hamstring injury; Green seized the starting role, and has held it over a decade and four championships.
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>In hindsight, all of that somehow feels inevitable: that [Stephen Curry](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3975/stephen-curry), [Klay Thompson](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/6475/klay-thompson), and Green were destined to win together — their skills so perfectly complementary, blurring into a cyclone (the Warriors actually have a play they don’t use much anymore called “Cyclone”) of cuts and passes and bodies in motion. There is something almost mystical about their connection. It is the type of bond that can develop only over thousands of shared high-stakes moments. It is sports nirvana.
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>Four months after a glorious, affirming championship, nirvana and mortality collided. The Warriors came to terms with [Andrew Wiggins](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3059319/andrew-wiggins) and [Jordan Poole](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/4277956/jordan-poole) on massive extensions; they struck no deal with Green, and did not hold substantive discussions with Thompson, sources said. (Green has a player option for next season. Thompson cannot become a free agent until July 2024; the Warriors have more time to negotiate with him.)
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>Barring someone taking a drastic pay cut, keeping Curry, Green, Thompson, Wiggins, and Poole beyond this season would result in an unprecedented and probably untenable tax bill. Golden State has options — all their contracts are tradable — but the simplest mathematically is parting at some point with Green or Thompson. Green is playing well, though not as well as he did in leading the Defensive Player of the Year race a year ago. Thompson is struggling; keeping him long term would mean committing an enormous sum to three guards in Curry, Poole, and Thompson.
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>Green punching Poole in practice last month held an almost literary subtext, even if it was subtext projected onto a simple, violent event: an aging star who helped build a dynasty struck a younger player heading the replacement generation.
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>It sparked rumors: Would the Warriors trade Green? (The Warriors have not engaged in any trade talks centered on Green, and don’t plan to as of now, sources said.) It reignited old debates: Was Green ever really a star in his own right, or was he the beneficiary of playing alongside the two greatest shooters ever — two all-time greats whose penchant for expert off-ball movement enabled Green to thrive as point-forward?
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>The truth is (as usual) somewhere in the middle, but it’s closer to the “Green is a star” pole. If we’re ranking the reasons the Warriors have won four titles in eight seasons, there is a chasm between Curry at No. 1 and everything else. Without Curry, there is nothing — no titles, no Chase Center, no gazillion-dollar valuation. With him, the Warriors could have won in many styles and forms. That is the luxury of all-time greatness: It can accommodate anything.
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>They took on, in part, the form and style of Green, and it turned out Green’s style amplified the central driving force that is Curry’s greatness.
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>And there is nothing wrong with being an amplifier of all-time superstardom.
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>**WHEN I THINK** about Green and Curry and what each brings to their partnership, I start with this play from Game 6 of the 2019 conference semifinals between the Warriors and [Houston Rockets](https://www.espn.com/nba/team/_/name/hou/houston-rockets):
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>[Kevin Durant](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3202/kevin-durant) was injured, leaving the “old” pre-Durant Warriors to close out their would-be usurpers. Green and Curry call this play the “hand-back.” Green has told me he does not remember which of them suggested it in the heat of the game. Golden State had been dicing up Houston with the same sideline pick-and-roll for most of the fourth quarter. The Rockets were trapping Curry, catapulting Green into the 4-on-3s that drowned the league from 2014 on:
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>Green was never an elite scoring threat out of those plays, but he can make enough semi-contested layups and floaters to keep defenses honest. His combination of speed and vision make him perhaps the greatest screen-setting playmaker in NBA history.
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>Green and Curry knew the trap was coming — that [P.J. Tucker](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3033/pj-tucker) would lunge away from Green, swarm Curry, and sprint into the paint to try to catch Green there. If Green stopped short, pitched the ball back to Curry, and slammed Curry’s guy with a pick, Tucker would not be able to reverse momentum in time to bother Curry’s shot.
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>Everything starts with the need to double Curry 30 feet from the rim. That was not something that happened before Curry. That basic reality — two players on one, almost at half-court — is the keystone to everything. It contains many pathways to championship glory.
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>Those pathways did not have to include Green. It’s easy to imagine an alternate reality where the Warriors never draft Green, turn [Harrison Barnes](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/6578/harrison-barnes) into a full-time power forward, and acquire an above-average rim-running center — someone like [Clint Capela](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3102529/clint-capela). Toss in one more playable wing, and you have a traditional spread pick-and-roll helmed by the greatest shooter ever.
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>Ironically, this is the style for which some of Kerr’s critics have long agitated. The Warriors routinely rank toward the basement in total pick-and-rolls. It is a style we have seen now and then with Green on the bench, and Looney working as Curry’s rim-runner — three shooters around them.
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>Looney is a smart passer in space when teams trap Curry, and a decent finisher in traffic:
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>Curry sometimes draws so much attention — borderline triple-teams — his screen-setter doesn’t even have to touch the ball; Curry just pings to an open shooter next to him:
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>This sort of lineup — Curry, Thompson, Poole, Wiggins, Looney — performed well in last year’s playoffs, and rallied the Warriors late in Game 4 of the Finals when Kerr benched Green.
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>We are seeing it now — and perhaps seeing more of Golden State’s future — during James Wiseman’s minutes. Wiseman is setting almost 40 ball screens per 100 possessions, according to Second Spectrum. Since 2013, only two Golden State rotation players have surpassed that average — both low-minutes backup centers: Marquese Chriss and Willie Cauley-Stein. Green has never averaged more than 26.7 ball screens per 100 possessions in any season.
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>There is zero doubt Golden State could have constructed an elite offense year after year in this vein. They have suffered no drop-off on that end over the past decade when Curry plays without Green, per Cleaning The Glass.
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>But it would have looked different — more like the rest of the NBA — and we don’t know if that resemblance would have impacted their success level somehow.
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>Even with Curry as an ever-present threat, that offense would have been more predictable than the Warriors’ read-and-react system. In the aggregate, perhaps that would not have mattered; the Warriors may have finished as high or even higher in offensive efficiency playing standard spread pick-and-roll.
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>The reverse is not true for Green. His game would not translate as easily to any context. Golden State’s offense has collapsed when he plays without Curry, per Cleaning The Glass. (In fairness, it has collapsed almost every season whenever Curry sits — regardless of who else is on the floor.)
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>Is there some value to Golden State’s stylistic uniqueness against the best postseason defenses? That’s hard to prove. Opposing coaches and players have often said the Warriors are harder to scout. The only way to prepare, the theory goes, is to experience the real thing over and over.
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>Curry might have to drive, dribble, and absorb contact more in a spread pick-and-roll system than in Golden State’s beautiful game. Is that more draining than the way he bobs and weaves and screens away from the ball? It’s tough to say, but the Warriors have always believed pounding the ball — facing the constant attention of all five defenders — is more taxing.
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>Think back to that sequence of Curry-Green pick-and-rolls against the Rockets in 2019: the variety, the deep bag of counters, the frightening sense that you have no idea what’s coming. That would not build to the same nervous mania with Curry running a more typical system.
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>The willingness of Curry and Thompson to move without the ball — and the creativity with which they do it — is the most important engine of Golden State’s symphony. They make the system unpredictable. But Green enhances that unpredictability in a way no other big man could. He has been at least Golden State’s co-point guard, averaging about seven assists per game in most seasons. That number differentiates him from most low-scoring role player stars.
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>There are a bunch of other screen-setters who thrive in those 4-on-3 situations. Green, though, is the very best. The centers who approach Green’s passing vision are slower on their feet; options close in the time it takes them to catch, pivot, and rev up. Those who can match Green’s footspeed are typically wings — too small to defend centers and even some power forwards.
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>And that, of course, is Green’s true separator: all-time great defense. Green is the best and most versatile defender of the past decade — the perfect counter for modern pace-and-space offenses. There is no “Death Lineup” — super small, overstocked with shooting and playmaking — without Green to switch everything and anchor the back line. How many people could credibly defend [James Harden](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3992/james-harden) one round, and [Nikola Jokic](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3112335/nikola-jokic) in the next?
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>The Capela-type rim protectors can’t do all that. You can build a top defense around them, but it wouldn’t be as flexible. (The Warriors are going through growing pains on defense with Wiseman now.)
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>On offense, that theoretical Warriors team wouldn’t play with the same velocity and five-out spacing. Green was never a great shooting threat, but his ability to orchestrate from up top opened the floor anyway. Green’s passing helped Golden State get away with pairing him and various non-shooting, defense-first centers — Andrew Bogut first, Looney now — in more traditional lineups.
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>Curry and Thompson — not Green — are the main enablers of those big lineups. Their combined shooting offers Kerr the luxury of playing more defense-first types.
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>That is not a slight on Green, really. He helped imbue the offense with an unusual form. It was as productive in that form as it would have been in any other with the Splash Brothers. Green did not take away from that production, and is the single biggest reason (by far) the Warriors have been an elite defensive team for almost his entire tenure. He also deserves credit for buying into a low-scoring role, even if he had no choice and knew it would lead to winning — which would lead to fame.
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>**GREEN IS NOW** a four-time All-Star with four rings, two All-NBA designations, and one Defensive Player of the Year. He is a likely Hall of Famer. It says something that he became an archetypal player: *We need our version of Draymond Green.* How many false Greens have there been? You even hear scouts discuss sub-types: [*Grant Williams*](https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/4066218/grant-williams) *could be Draymond Green without the playmaking.*
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>Would Green have been all that on any other team? Probably not. Most other apex superstars would have not ceded ballhandling duties to the cinder-block, non-shooting forward with the roaring soul as Curry did. Green would bog down the spacing as a stand-still secondary option.
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>But peak Green would have been very good in lots of places. Other teams would have found ways to leverage his playmaking; they would not have turned Green into an unguarded bystander to some vanilla pick-and-roll offense. They could stash him in the strong-side corner — a no-help zone — have him set flare screens, involve him in decoy actions, let him lurk in the dunker spot. Heck, you see some of this now when Green and Wiseman play together:
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>He’d have still set plenty of screens, sometimes as the solo center in ultra-small lineups and sometimes with another big man ready to catch lobs near the rim — a regular Warriors set-up for years. It’s not a coincidence Green has played on winning teams in high school, college, and the NBA.
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>That there is a canyon between Curry and every other factor driving Golden State’s dominance does not make the other top players — Green included — fungible. Lifting talent is a talent in itself. Green is and was a legitimate star in his own right, and if this is his last season with the Warriors — not even close to a sure thing — the team will never look, sound, or feel the same again.

by UA30_j7L