You probably watched a lot of game-winning shots, but what about a game-winning block? That is what happened last night at Oracle Center, where the Golden State Warriors took a tough win over the Atlanta Hawks. And the hero of the game is the rather low-profile member of the big four, Draymond Green, who offered not one, but two game-winning blocks within the last minute of the game. He always contributes to the team with his selfless ball-sharing and harsh defense. Experts and fans are all starting to recognize his great performance on court. But exactly how good is Draymond Green?
Low-profile may not be the accurate description for Draymond due to his notorious temper and unstoppable desire to show off. But score-wise, he is the less shining one. Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson scored 27.1, 26.6 and 20.7 points per game respectively while Draymond scored only had 10.1 points per game since the season started. But don’t let this fool you, Draymond is still the most important person in the Warriors’ offensive and defensive system. Why did I say this? I firmly believe that stats are the best reflection of a player’s capability on the court. Some people may say that stats does not mean everything and sometimes it cannot demonstrate a player’s performance fully. I think that is absolutely incorrect. If not one stats category, a player’s performance on the court can definitely be shown with the combination of several different stats categories. Like I mentioned above, Draymond does not have as high of a per game score as three of his teammates. But other than scoring, Draymond leads the team in every other main stats with averagely 8.6 rebounds, 6.9 assists, 2.1 steals and 1.8 blocks per game so far in this season. He ranked 19th in the league on rebounds, ninth on assists, second on steals and seventh on blocks. He is the only player who ranked top 10 in three of the five main stats categories.
Despite all the positive reviews towards Draymond Green, I would say that he is still underrated. He claimed himself to be one of the best NBA players within the current league, and people still laughed at him. I say this statement is flawless. Don’t believe me? Lets break down his character. Draymond is an exceptionally strong and athletic PF who is 6’7” high, weigh 230lb, have a high basketball I.Q., great passing skill, incredible one-on-one defensive technique, and great leadership skill. He can shoot basketball from outside of the three-point line and manage to keep a field goal percentage over 40 percent. Any feature I just mentioned is not rare to find in the league, but combining them together onto one player is extremely rare. The only other person in the NBA who possess all the greatness mentioned above is Lebron James. The comparison between the two players have been going on for a while, and despite what most people say, I think they are more of an equal match. The reason that Lebron appears to be much better as a player is that he still needs to contribute to the scoreboard constantly for Cavs, while Draymond already have three most deadly scorers in the league on his side so he can focus on getting other jobs done. From this point of view, Draymond is definitely one of the best players in the league. And he is only 26 years old, there is still a long way ahead of him to achieve more.
