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Draymond Green: B

In the aftermath of the Warriors’ season-ending loss to the Memphis Grizzlies in the 2021 play-in tournament, Draymond Green was a frequent target of Twitter vitriol. On the Warriors’ last offensive possession of the game, the Grizzlies trapped Steph Curry near halfcourt, Draymond Green got the ball on the short roll and then bricked a floater with less than two seconds left in the game. Here’s one such representative Tweet:

For what it’s worth, I thought Green did the majority of his damage to the Warriors during the first half when he repeatedly gifted top-locking Grizzlies the ball on reckless passes to the baseline. But discourse gonna discourse and the bricked floater was a boiling point for a legion of Warriors fans frustrated by Green’s decline on offense and his aversion to shooting.

In the 2021 offseason, Bob Myers and Steve Kerr both talked openly about how the Warriors would benefit from Draymond shooting capably. Here are some quotes: 

"We've seen Draymond shoot. He's capable. We're not asking somebody to do something they haven't done," Warriors president of basketball operations Bob Myers said in late May. "When we sat with him [during exit interviews], I said, 'Draymond, if you were me talking to yourself, what would you say?' And he said, 'Shoot the damn ball. I need you to score.'

[...]

"There's no getting around the fact that when he makes a 3, makes a couple 3s, gets 10 or 12 points, we are a better team," Kerr told the media. "Draymond knows that.

"The whole point going into next year is for me as Draymond's head coach and as the coach of this team to really encourage that kind of aggression but to help that aggression. I’ve got to do more to help Draymond offensively.”

Why would the powers that be want Draymond, a genuinely bad shooter, to shoot more? Well, the Warriors have played quite well in the last few seasons when he’s aggressive. A fun recurring bit on Twitter during the 2020-21 season was people tracking the Warriors’ record when Draymond Green scored over 8 points. 

Despite playing 19 games less in the 2021-22 season than the season prior, Draymond Green tallied 20 games where he scored over 8 points and the Warriors had a 16-4 record in these games. Draymond was more aggressive this past season, but his three-point shot did not come along for the ride. In 46 games, Draymond shot a career-low 1.5 threes per 36 minutes and only connected on 29.6% of those attempts. Where Draymond funneled his aggression instead was on the defensive end and — at least in the early season — attacking the rim. Here’s NBA analyst, Jackson Frank on Draymond’s offense in early December:

So, this year, Green has largely eschewed threes from his shot profile. Through 21 games, he’s taken just 19 of them. His .161 three-point is a career-low, a steep drop from the .375 number he amassed in his first nine years.

Instead, he’s attacking the basket with unforeseen vigor and success. His 55 percent rim frequency ties a career-high from his standout 2015-16 and sits notably above the 46, 32, and 41 percent clips he posted the prior three seasons, according to Cleaning The Glass.

When defenses sell out with a “nobody except Draymond” mindset, he’s seizing advantage of the one-on-one or one-on-none coverage extended his way. Per Synergy, he’s taking the ball to the basket on 28.2 percent of his spot-up reps (1.636 points per possession, 100th percentile) after doing so on just 15.5 percent (0.909 PPP, 27th percentile) of his possessions a season ago.

But through the early months of the season, Draymond got most of his press for defense. Per NBA.com on December 19, “the Warriors had a defensive rating under 100 in 12 of their first 30 games this season compared to 11 times in 72 games in 2020-21,” and Green was getting well-deserved buzz for Defensive Player of the Year. In the press, Green talked openly and joked about his desire to win DPOY, and when a short-handed Warriors team beat the Suns on Christmas Day, I thought he pretty much wrapped up the award. Here are a few moments that stuck out from his 8 point, 8 rebound, and 10-assist night:

That Christmas day victory came just about two weeks before Draymond’s season was derailed by what turned out to be a disc injury in his lower back. That injury reared its head in warm-ups on January 9th, the day of Klay Thompson’s return, and initially registered as an aggravation to Green’s calf muscle. Green, clearly aware of the weight of Klay’s return, started the game as a symbolic formality and committed a foul immediately after tip-off to sub out of the game. That would be Draymond’s last oncourt appearance for more than two months.

About a week after Klay’s return, the Warriors announced that Draymond’s calf issue was related to a disc in his lower back and that he would be out for at least another two weeks. On January 25th, Andscape’s Marc Spears reported that there was “no light at the end of the tunnel” for Draymond and that his return date was uncertain. Over in Milwaukee, Brook Lopez, who’d had surgery to repair a bulging disc in his back, was still months away from his return, one that had been repeatedly pushed back. While Draymond did not end up needing surgery, this parallel was still an uneasy one, especially as the Warriors were simultaneously optimistic and vague in public about the state of Green’s rehab. Here’s Steve Kerr in early February:

“We’re just being very cautious sand patient, understanding that it’s a delicate injury and you can’t rush this,” Kerr said, adding that the nature of Green’s injury prevents them from setting a clear timetable. Hence the vague update.

“It’s really impossible to predict when he’s going to play but all of the reports, including from him, have been very positive,” Kerr said.

 In a recent podcast, Draymond Green revealed that he did genuinely think his season might be over at one point. That fear was not made public at any point in the season, but Draymond’s rehab did drag on longer than expected and by mid-February, the Warriors’ vague statements, like for example, this one in mid-February — “it’s anticipated that he will return to play at some point after the All-Star break. He has recently progressed to doing some light on-court activity and will continue to increase his workload moving forward. The next update will be provided when he returns to practice on a date to be determined.” — offered little comfort. 

But by March, Draymond and the Warriors organization pushed a possible mid-March return date, and on the 14th of that month, he played again. For the first time since his sophomore season, Draymond came off the bench, a move that was made to minimize his downtime between on-court stints. Draymond’s first possession of the night was rather typical:

The Warriors won that game easily and the late-second offensive explosion of the Curry/Poole/Thompson/Green combo was cause for excitement. But the next game, Steph Curry’s leg was injured by Marcus Smart and the Warriors went into a freefall that included an ugly loss to the tanking Orlando Magic and a stretch of five straight losses in games that Green played. I was at one of those games — my first Warriors game since the 2013 playoffs — and came away from it very pessimistic about Draymond and the state of the Warriors. 

My ex-girlfriend and I had traveled down from New York to Washington D.C. and had a lovely day tarnished by an uninspiring loss to the Wizards. In the second half, Draymond had a meltdown that was, frankly, childish and embarrassing, that seemed to stem from a back-and-forth in the third quarter with Kristaps Porzingis, which you can see below:

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