Warriors: Will Draymond Green win Defensive Player of the Year?
By Andrew Ites
Will Warriors forward Draymond Green win his second Defensive Player of the Year award next season?
The Warriors’ defense dipped a bit during the regular season last year as they didn’t have a ton of motivation to give their full effort on that end of the floor until the playoffs began.
Golden State had the league’s second-best defensive rating in 2016-17, but they fell to 11th in that statistic last season.
Much of that defensive decline falls on the shoulders of their best defensive player Draymond Green, who even admitted that his intensity was not high enough on that end of the floor last year.
Draymond finished second in the league in defensive real plus-minus in 2016-17 (+5.59) averaging 2 steals and 1.4 blocks per game on his way to winning his first Defensive Player of the Year award.
Green fell to 14th in defensive real plus-minus (+3.34) last season, and his steal (1.4) and block (1.3) numbers took a dip as well.
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In addition to a possible lack of intensity, Draymond was battling a shoulder injury all year long that may have affected his game on the defensive end.
I believe Draymond wants to go down as the best defender of all-time, and he needs to win multiple Defensive Player of the Year awards to enter that conversation.
The Warriors will probably sleepwalk through the regular season again next year, but that motivation to put another award in the trophy case could encourage Green to bring that 2016-17 level of intensity on the defensive end again next season.
Draymond is in the prime of his career, and his defensive skills have not diminished at all as we saw him turn it on in the postseason last season.
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Green’s level of motivation will determine whether he becomes the best defender in the league again next season. Unfortunately, I think he’ll be resting during much of the regular season in anticipation of another championship run and won’t win the award next year.
But he’ll be a dominant defender when the games matter most like he was last season.
Here are our other predictions on whether Warriors can win some awards next year: