MUST READ: 2018 Offseason: The Absurdity Behind Overrating Role Players

For the last 3 seasons Draymond Green has easily been the most overrated player because he’s generally viewed as a top 15 player which is absurd. He's arguably the best defender but his offense is nowhere near as good as its perceived by most. Draymond gets his assists by holding/dribbling the ball (in place) in the post or on the perimeter then passing to teammates that become open. He also gets them when defenses double team a lethal three-point shooter (usually Stephen Curry) on pick and rolls, which creates a 4 versus 3 situation when he receives the ball. Then Green dribbles forward with no pressure which brings the defense inward so he gets to choose between an easy lob/pass into the paint or a simple pass to an unguarded shooter waiting behind the arc. When he gets the ball after a stop and pushes it into transition, many times he's able to find open long-range shooters and cutters for elementary assists without having to penetrate a set defense.

Draymond Green isn’t one of the best passers in the NBA despite his assist averages. He's on the level of players like Nikola Jokic, Al Horford, and Marc Gasol who are second-tier distributers (don’t get me wrong, they still have good passing skills). The greatest passers (tier 1) are the likes of Russell Westbrook, John Wall, Chris Paul, James Harden, LeBron James and Ben Simmons because they beat defenders off the dribble and/or operate in pick and rolls as ball handlers to draw defenses inward (or move defenders out of their normal position) to create shots for teammates. Draymond RARELY does those things and the last two seasons he's been way below average as a three-point shooter, 30.8% in 2016-17 and 30.1% in 2017-18, despite defenses leaving him open on purpose. He’s also very limited at generating his own shot and seldom does it as a result.

Green is the epitome of a very overrated system player (he’s a good player but I have to be honest especially when most are ignoring the obvious). The reason is because he wouldn't come close to being considered as a top 15 player on a team that doesn’t have an offensive genius like Steve Kerr, players that can produce shots for themselves/teammates at an elite level (Curry, Kevin Durant) and an abundant amount of good to historically great long-distance shooters (Curry, Durant, Klay Thompson, etc.) to hide his glaring weaknesses. Everything that’s been discussed is what heavily flawed advanced stats (Real Plus Minus, Win Shares, Total Points Added, PER and some others) and team success/popularity don’t account for.

RPM is a player's estimated on-court influence on team production (via espn.com). It also takes into account teammates, opponents, and other factors but for last season Robert Covington’s RPM is the 8th highest in the league while KD’s is the 24st highest. Otto Porter is ranked number 13 while LaMarcus Aldridge sits 18 spots below him. WS, “RPM Wins”, provide an estimate of the quantity of wins each player has contributed to his squads' win total on the season (via espn.com). For that year Joe Ingles occupies the 21st best spot, 9 spots ahead of DeMar DeRozan. Spencer Dinwiddie is in front of Kyrie Irving while Wall and Kristaps Porzingis aren’t in the top 50 even though there’s no consistency with the number of games played for Win Shares or any of the aforementioned advanced statistics. I shouldn’t need to explain why per-possession/minute player stats are extremely faulty (per-possession is great as a team statistic since teams play at different paces) so here are examples of those type of stats. TPA looks at both defensive and offensive effectiveness on a per-possession basis while also including the amount of playing time the player in question receives (via nbamath.com). Paul George, who played 913 more minutes than Kyle Anderson, ranks behind Anderson. PER is a rating of a player’s per-minute production (via espn.com). Bradley Beal, Devin Booker and Jrue Holiday are below the top 55 even though Montrezl Harrell’s rank is number 12.  

The definitions of those stats are worded in an educated manner but the results are preposterous because they usually rank lesser players ahead of far superior all NBA-caliber players. What's worse is that many bleacher report journalists, ESPN writers and other media members have used the stats (and others like them) for years to help them determine how players stack up against one another. Draymond Green, Rudy Gobert, Clint Capela, Klay Thompson are examples of players that are very limited offensively but they’re greatly overrated by a lot of those "experts" who make up a large portion of all-NBA voters. (I feel a lot less strongly about Klay being as overrated compared to the others since he’s averaged at least 20 points per game the last 4 seasons and is the 2nd best three-point shooter in history. However, last year he played 73 games while shooting under 100 free throws and the season before over 80% of his shot attempts came without taking more than one dribble, via bleacher report’s Dan Favale, so he’s still overrated). The reason is because they are all-NBA caliber defenders, most of the popular advanced stats typically support their production and primarily since their teams usually challenge for at least home court advantage in the first round.

The 2nd leading scorer for the 2000-01 76ers averaged 12.4 points per game. Only one of the players who was a double digit scorer (averaging 9.9<12.5) made a three-point shot during the season, and he converted only 53 of them in 76 games while shooting 31.2% which is considerably below average. Rodney Buford led the team in long-range percentage but was 16/38 (42.1%) in 47 contests, averaging less than one attempt per game. Philly had the fewest makes from behind the arc besides the Cavaliers while having the 4th worst percentage in the NBA. Yet this squad won 56 games and made the finals because they had one guy who was one of the best in history at producing shots for himself. There have been many other teams like that sixer bunch who had only one elite scorer (which isn’t determined by points per game, see: Marion, Shawn) and maybe as a group were subpar from three-point range. If you place a Thompson, Draymond or Gobert type of player in a situation similar to Allen Iverson’s role (or even Aldridge’s on the 2017-18 Spurs) on the 2000-01 Sixers, they’d be badly exposed for what they are: quality role players (Thompson is better than a role player but not a star). However, every team that’s built to win as much as possible needs many of those types of low-maintenance players on offense since they are either vertical spacers, give the Iverson types lots of room to operate because of their great long-distance shooting, or are good passers who could care less about how many shots they take. But it would be virtually impossible for one of them to be the best player on a 40 win team. (The only contradiction that comes to mind is the 2013-14 Bulls that Joakim Noah led, the Green comparison in this case, but despite having home court advantage they won only 1 game in the 1st round to a mediocre 44 win Wizards team. Even worse, Chicago averaged a paltry 90 points per game along with scoring 69 points in game 5 proving that defense alone is far more successful in the regular season because teams play most of their games against non-championship caliber squads and get way more time in the playoffs to scout an opponent. The Bulls averaged 93.7 points per game in that regular season, last in the NBA, so their playoff average wasn’t a fluke). Those types of players would make teams like the 2001 eastern conference champs way worse (if any of them replaced an Iverson) because while they would likely improve the defense, the offense would suffer since they are extremely limited at creating shots for themselves which includes scoring as a pick and roll ball handler. (Klay Thompson’s post game only works on much smaller players so I’m not considering that).

Basketball games are won by how many points are scored, not by how many stops a team gets. Great defense (it’s still valuable regardless of what I’ve said) doesn’t always lead to stops and bad defense doesn't get punished every time but a score within the rules always counts for 1,2, or 3 point(s) despite the defense. So Rudy Gobert was never the second best center nor was Joel Embiid the tenth best center heading into the 2017-18 season (via bleacherreport.com). ESPN.com ranked Draymond Green ahead of players such as Jimmy Butler, Karl-Anthony Towns, Paul George, John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins in an article previewing the aforementioned year. These rankings show that the eye test is far more reasonable than random math equations and team success/popularity (which is why DraftExpress videos are so great).

P.S. Draymond Green was never “the most important player on the Warriors” or “the heart and soul” of that team just because he plays great defense and is always running his mouth. In 2015-16, the birth of those foolish claims, Stephen Curry averaged 30.1 points per game and became the only player in history to make over 300 three-pointers in a season (HE MADE 402 ON 45.4% SHOOTING FROM LONG RANGE!!!). During Green’s best season he averaged only 14 points per contest and made 100 three-pointers on 38.8% shooting from behind the arc. It’s highly likely that Draymond won’t come close to putting up better stats in all 3 categories in another year. Also, watch the videos below (one from the 2015-16 season and another from the 2016-17 season) to prove what I said about Green's passing. I couldn't find a video like the others from last year but the ones here represent what Draymond Green was doing in 2017-18.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45ZF73C4e5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhD7uAUMo_A

Unless otherwise noted, all stats come from nba.com