OAKLAND, CA -- Draymond Green will return to the Golden State Warriors on a new deal worth $85 million over five years.
Green won the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year award in 2015 for his stellar performances locking down opposing forwards on a stunningly consistent basis. His value is undoubted, and at the age of 25, Draymond has the potential to grow leaps and bounds.
"I'm excited, thankful and grateful to be back in the Bay," Green said to Yahoo! Sports shortly after agreeing on the deal with Golden State.
Golden State finished the 2014-2015 NBA regular season with the best overall record of 67-15. The Warriors then fought through the Western Conference Playoffs to an NBA Finals matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers. While LeBron James had an unbelievable series against Green, the Warriors came out on top with a Larry O'Brien Trophy after winning the series four games to two.
The 6'7" Michigan State Spartan has improved his production and skill set over his three NBA seasons. In 2014-2015 regular season play, he averaged 11.7 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 3.7 assists per game. He finally earned his starting role, being named a member of the starting lineup in all of his 79 appearances.
The Warriors' go-to hustle man turned it up in the Playoffs. After his 2014 Playoffs stats were a foreshadowing of his numbers in the following regular season, Green once again put up bigger and more impactful figures in the postseason. He averaged a double-double of 13.7 points and 10.1 rebounds per game, as well as an head-turning 5.2 dropped dimes per contest. The best part about this for Golden State was that his two-point field goal shooting was great, at 51.0% in the Playoffs. However his three-point stroke was a whole other story. He shot just 26.4% from beyond-the-arc on 91 attempts in postseason play.
“It’s hard to put into words what Draymond means to the team,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr told Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders. “He does everything; he’s a jack of all trades. On top of that, he’s one of our leaders and the guy who talks the most trash to the other team, to the refs, to his teammates, to me. He’s kind of our lifeline."
It is hard to measure how talented a defender is without intense analytics and sabremetrics. The simple stats that can tell a good defender are steals and blocks, but to delve into the overall defensive quality of a player is defensive rating. Green satisfied high-quality numbers in all of these statistic categories, racking up 1.6 steals and 1.3 blocks in the regular season, 1.8 and 1.2 in the Playoffs. As for defensive rating, Draymond finished with the fourth-best (fourth-lowest) stat of 97.2.
Bob Myers got it right when he drafted Green 35th overall in the 2012 draft. Now Myers gets to watch Draymond develop even further, as Green is locked up in The City for the next five seasons at least.
Getting pieces like Green to return are the major steps in staying in NBA Finals shape and position. What's to stop the Warriors from repeating in 2015-2016?
