Draymond Green vs. Scottie Pippen

[Drylick]

this stuff has got to stop.

Why is it so difficult to so many people to admit, that some new unique player might be better than legends from the past?

Because some, like Draymond, are really just not.

[KFL]

Pippen and it's not even close. Wow how people either forget or just don't know.

The poll is 40 to 9. Its not like Draymond is winning.

You can have a discussion without it being disrespectful to a guy. Pippen was great. So is Draymond. Comparing the two isn't blasphemous

Who was being disrespectful? My opinion is that Green just isnt in Pippen's league. To me Green is a good player that plays on the perfect team for his abilities. Pippen is an all time great so yeah in my opinion it is blasphemous to put Green on Pippen's level.

[lorak]

this stuff has got to stop.

Why is it so difficult to so many people to admit, that some new unique player might be better than legends from the past?

Because some, like Draymond, are really just not.

How do you know that?

[East Bay Sports]

Pippen and it's not even close. Wow how people either forget or just don't know.

The poll is 40 to 9. Its not like Draymond is winning.

You can have a discussion without it being disrespectful to a guy. Pippen was great. So is Draymond. Comparing the two isn't blasphemous

Who was being disrespectful? My opinion is that Green just isnt in Pippen's league. To me Green is a good player that plays on the perfect team for his abilities. Pippen is an all time great so yeah in my opinion it is blasphemous to put Green on Pippen's level.

I didn't say any user was being disrespectful. I said it isn't disrespectful to Pippen to talk about he and Draymond together.

And you talk about Dray's situation like Pippen wasn't also on an amazing team with perfect pieces around him to succeed. Don't be a hypocrite. Both guys were put into ideal scenarios.

[Jim Naismith]

Look, I HATED Pippen back in the 90s (NY Knicks fan--his attitude, dunks on Ewing, etc), so I am NOT a Pippen fanboy.

To even compare them is an insult....Pippen was a far superior player overall.

Green is good, but I agree with many in this thread that it's getting out of hand.

This thread is an insult to the great Pippen.

Not an insult.

1994 Pippen was a top-5/top-10 player (behind Hakeem/Robinson/Shaq/Ewing/K. Malone).

Draymond occupies a similar top 5-10 position today.

[THKNKG]

Look, I HATED Pippen back in the 90s (NY Knicks fan--his attitude, dunks on Ewing, etc), so I am NOT a Pippen fanboy.

To even compare them is an insult....Pippen was a far superior player overall.

Green is good, but I agree with many in this thread that it's getting out of hand.

This thread is an insult to the great Pippen.

Not an insult.

1994 Pippen was a top-5/top-10 player (behind Hakeem/Robinson/Shaq/Ewing/K. Malone).

Draymond occupies a similar top 5-10 position today.

This is what happens when you pose something different than that which has become axiomatic; you get lots of pushback.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

[drza]

This is an interesting thread. It pits players with similar roles, on teams of similar caliber. The main difference is that one played their career through, while the other is really just ramping up to peak. On the face of their basketball contributions, this should be a well-contested debate. Instead, the majority of the people are sniffing in condescension and moving on. I can't say that I get that, especially on a Player Comparison discussion forum. Anyway, my 2 cents...

*Pippen and Draymond were both tasked with being strong defenders and primary playmakers for their teams, in a supporting role for the "MVP" guys on their respective teams. And, both did this at an excellent level

*Defense: Pippen was a pure small forward, who had the ability to defend 1-on-1 players from big point guards to small power forwards. He also provided good perimeter help and switch defense. By both role and avocation, 1-on-1 defense and perimeter help/switch defense was what he provided. Thus, his defensive impact would be measured on the scale of great perimeter defenders. And the available evidence that we have from that era backs up the general premise, that he was an excellent wing defender but he did not have the defensive impact of the great defensive bigs of the era. It's a different scale.

Draymond, on the other hand, plays power forward/center. He is a bit shorter than you'd historically expect for the position, but he has the girth of a true PF and arms that are longer than his height suggests. As such, in this era in particular, he has no trouble defending any power forward and he is comfortable against most centers as well. More importantly, his help defense is that of a big man, not a perimeter player. Thus, his defensive impact is measured on the scale of the great defensive bigs of his era...in reality, despite what the DPoY hardware says, Green's defense has been solidly more impactful than Kawhi Leonard's over the last few years, more comparable to an anchor center like Rudy Gobert than the best perimeter defenders of this generation. Just, a different level higher, when it comes to defensive impact.

Thus, by both positional expectation and available impact data, Draymond was a significantly more impactful defensive player than Pippen. On an order similar to the difference in defensive impact of Kawhi to Gobert (or, in his era, Pippen to maybe Ewing or Robinson). It's not particularly close, on that side of the ball.

*Offense. Thus, for Pippen to win this comp, he would need to be the much stronger offensive player. Certainly, Pippen showed himself to be a higher volume scorer than Draymond, both while he was Jordan's sidekick as well as when he got to play the lead role during Jordan's retirement. However, in neither iteration was primary scoring the primary hallmark for Pippen. He was a good slasher, had a reasonable shot (though nothing special for a wing), and his offensive moves off the dribble were more suited to open court than half-court. He didn't have a great post-scoring game; he didn't have a particularly slick crossover game or step-back jumper. He could beat a 1-on-1 off the dribble with jab-steps and speed, but that was more likely to lead to a drive to the rim or a drive-and-kick than setting up a high-percentage jumper. I say all of this to say that Pippen had a good ability to score, but wasn't the iso scorer that most great perimeter scoring threats are.

No, instead, Pippen made his largest impact due to his point-forward skills. In fact, the playmaking aspect of his offense likely had a larger effect on his offensive impact than his pure scoring prowess. He could knock down an open jumper, but wasn't a great shooter for a wing, plus he played (and was thus defended by) opposing wings, so he wasn't generating much spacing impact. Thus, Pippen projected (offensive-impact-wise) as a strong playmaker (especially given the boost that it was coming from a position, small forward, in which playmaking isn't often found to that level) with his scoring prowess more of a secondary impact.

Draymond doesn't project as an iso scorer at all. He is a solid hustle scorer, able to finish off put-backs around the rim. He also could beat his man, usually an opposing big, off the dribble with jab steps and speed (not so much a slick crossover game) and, similarly, this would be most likely to lead to a rim attack or a kick-out. Draymond's not the iso scorer that you expect to create his own shot (which, often, would be a mid-ranged jumper for great iso scorers). Draymond can knock down an open jumper, including the open trey...again, not at an amazing clip, but corrected by position (which you have to do), he is enough of a shooting threat that he generates some small spacing effect.

But, like Pippen, his largest offensive impact with his point-forward skills. The Warriors run their offense through him as a primary decision maker, at least as often as the Bulls ran their offense through Pippen in a similar role. But, again, position is important...Pippen got a bit of an impact boost because floor generalship from a small forward is rare and helps the offense to create mismatches. However, Green gets an even bigger impact boost because floor generalship from a big man is even MORE rare and creates MORE mismatches. Big men aren't comfortable playing on-ball defense from the perimeter, and bringing them out from the rim as a playmaker adds to Green's spacing impact. Plus, because the play is being run through a big man, that means that all three perimeter players are free to work off ball to set up for a shot. In the case of the Warriors, obviously, the 3 off-ball shooters are three of the greatest shooter/scorers in NBA history, which is why their net offensive level is historic. However, and this is key, DRAYMOND'S IMPACT ON THE OFFENSE WOULD BE JUST AS LARGE IF THE SHOOTERS HE WAS SETTING UP WEREN'T AS GOOD!

This is something that gets lost, often, when people say "yeah, but Draymond is in the perfect situation". Draymond would make life similarly easy for Jeff Teague, Lou Williams and Khris Middleton as he does for Curry, Klay and Durant. His own offensive impact scores would still register as very high if these were his teammates. The difference, is, the TEAM'S output wouldn't be nearly as great, because the finishers would be closer to league average than all world. But Draymond's individual offensive impact, as a point-big-man, would stay similar.

And, factored all in, Draymond's combo of point big man/reasonable big man shooter with range/garbageman scorer likely measures out as similar, if not higher on the impact scale, than Pippen's combo of point-forward/reasonable wing shooter/reasonable iso scorer for wing. Pippen is a better scorer than and arguably as effective of a point guard as Draymond in a vacuum, but given their positions, Draymond's offensive package likely causes more hardships for opponents than does Pippen's.

*Overall. Thus, my expectation based on their skillsets would be that Draymond would be an overall higher impact player. That his defensive impact would be solidly higher, really on a different scale, and that his offensive net effect might be larger as well. Draymond's skill set would also, likely, be more portable than Pippen's. Defense is more portable than offense in general, and Draymond makes a bigger mark there. On offense, neither are maximized next to a pure point guard/non-shooters, but Draymond (by dint of being a big, with range) would fit on a team with less offensive strictures on the other players in the unit than would Pippen. An offense with Pippen and Jason Kidd, or Pippen and Elfrid Payton, has very little chance to be balanced with good spacing. Put Draymond on those teams, instead, and you can still put two scoring/shooting wings out there and have everything be fine. I can't create a similar conundrum in reverse...I can't imagine a reasonably built offense in which Pippen would work fine, but Draymond wouldn't.

And, for what it's worth, the available impact stats back up this assessment. Pippen had very solid +/- numbers around the years of Jordan's absence and the second 3-peat, but they weren't world-beating numbers. Without Jordan, his on/off +/- was on the order of upper single-digits/lower double-digits, and with Jordan during the 3-peat years the scores remained in that range, but clearly subordinate to Mike's. We don't have a similar Draymond-as-the-man period of +/- numbers to compare, but we do have him in the last 3 years as an analog to the second 3-peat Bulls. And Draymond is more impressive. His on/off +/- numbers are much higher (which may not be so important, because that could be a dynamic of how effective Draymond is in a unit (or, in the case of reality, when paired with Steph Curry))...but what is important, is that Draymond's +/- footprint wasn't subordinate to Curry's in '15 and '16, the way Pippen's was to Jordan's, but instead Draymond had an argument that his was the larger. The regressions indicated that to be so. This is why, over the last few years, Draymond has been right there with Curry and a couple of others at the very top of both the raw on/off as well as the RAPM rankings, while Pippen in those mid-90s years was generally farther down the list among his contemporaries.

As the skillset comp would have predicted...Draymond's mechanisms and level of impact are just larger than Pippen's. Despite Pippen being great, and a Hall of Famer, Draymond is a bigger impact player (and would be so on most teams, not just ones with ridiculous shooters).

[Jim Naismith]

As the skillset comp would have predicted...Draymond's mechanisms and level of impact are just larger than Pippen's. Despite Pippen being great, and a Hall of Famer, Draymond is a bigger impact player

Amen!

Your beautifully written post lays out in comprehensive detail what I can intuitively sense but struggle to express.

[Drylick]

Why is it so difficult to so many people to admit, that some new unique player might be better than legends from the past?

Because some, like Draymond, are really just not.

How do you know that?

Because I have common sense and I watched Pippen since 1988. Bruh

[GYK]

I personally love the comparison.
Green is this sort of Rodman and Pippen hybrid. Which makes me slide with him slightly. I'd imagine it would be harder and more unorthodox to replicate Greens role and output with a team more than scottie but it could be done.
His position spacing & passing/defensive switching & rim protection just seems more rare.

[penbeast0]

Just wanted to confirm that we were all discussing the same guy. This is who we are talking about, right?
Draymond Green: 10.2pts (.418 .308 .709) .522TS% 7.9reb 7.0ast 2.0stl 1.4blk 2.4TO 16.5PER?

this stuff has got to stop.

unless of course people want to continue to claim that Draymond Green might be a Top 30 player of all time. In which case, carry on of course.

Other players Draymond Green just might not be as good as: John Stockton, Isiah Thomas, Walt Frazier, John Havlicek, Elgin Baylor, Patrick Ewing, Rick Barry, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, Gary Payton, Dwayne Wade, Clyde Drexler, and anybody else we can think of who might be Top 40 of all time.


Players Draymond Green DOES bear some resemblance to:

Andrei Kirilenko
Anthony Mason
Dennis Rodman (maybe)
Shawn Marion

It's the 7.0 assists from the PF spot plus his defensive ability that makes him unique. Thus the Pippen comparison though Pippen was a clearly superior scorer.

But none of the comps you give has any real playmaking other than passing out of the post so Pippen is still probably a better comp than Marion who was a good (20ppg) off ball scorer and superior rebounder with no handles or playmaking skills. Mason had some playmaking for a PF but never approached that level (one season over 5.0 assists and that was playing 43.1 mpg) plus he wasn't in Green's league for quickness and had very limited shooting range. Rodman is such an odd outlier he is tough to compare to anyone but again, not a playmaker (though a decent passer considering). Kirilenko is efficient (unlike Green), a decent passer but not a playmker, and one with limited minutes for much of his career. I'm just not seeing these either.

Maybe Maurice Stokes?

[G35]

However, and this is key, DRAYMOND'S IMPACT ON THE OFFENSE WOULD BE JUST AS LARGE IF THE SHOOTERS HE WAS SETTING UP WEREN'T AS GOOD!

This is something that gets lost, often, when people say "yeah, but Draymond is in the perfect situation". Draymond would make life similarly easy for Jeff Teague, Lou Williams and Khris Middleton as he does for Curry, Klay and Durant. His own offensive impact scores would still register as very high if these were his teammates. The difference, is, the TEAM'S output wouldn't be nearly as great, because the finishers would be closer to league average than all world. But Draymond's individual offensive impact, as a point-big-man, would stay similar.

As the skillset comp would have predicted...Draymond's mechanisms and level of impact are just larger than Pippen's. Despite Pippen being great, and a Hall of Famer, Draymond is a bigger impact player (and would be so on most teams, not just ones with ridiculous shooters).

Good post, good arguments...but I don't know you can logically say that Green would have just as much impact on say, the Kings or the Bulls, as he would on the Warriors.

Warriors 3pt shooting this year:

Durant - .467
Thompson - .471
Curry - .388
N.Young - .417

These guys are taking a combined 27.4 3PA's per game and making 11.9...that is .434 percentage. When you combine the rest of the Warriors they are at .415% which leads the league. So the rest of the team is "dragging" down their shooting percentages.

The Warriors don't even need 3pt specialists like most other teams, their best players are the best 3pt shooters.

Could you explain how if Draymond was on the current Chicago Bulls, how his skillset would be as effective on that team as it is on the Warriors. I have a hard time understanding how Draymond is going to get his seven assists passing to these guys:

Bulls top four 3pt shooters:

Holiday - .329
Markkanen - .351
Valentine - .377
Zipser - .263

This is more of a chicken vs egg question because we really do not know how well Draymond would be on another team, or without Curry/Klay. No one thought the Bulls or Pippen would be as good when Jordan retired. I suspect much of it was motivation by the rest of the team (Horace Grant was one of the players that did not enjoy playing with MJ) stepped up their performance in 1994.

But with Draymond, it is very hard to separate his skills from the rest of the Warriors who have shown they are just as good performers with or without Draymond. Honestly, I think both Pippen and Draymond benefit from their teams individual systems and would not be nearly as good if they were say playing in a Cleveland Cavaliers type system or even a Houston Rockets/Phoenix Suns style system where there is only one primary ball handler......

[SlowPaced]

However, and this is key, DRAYMOND'S IMPACT ON THE OFFENSE WOULD BE JUST AS LARGE IF THE SHOOTERS HE WAS SETTING UP WEREN'T AS GOOD!

This is something that gets lost, often, when people say "yeah, but Draymond is in the perfect situation". Draymond would make life similarly easy for Jeff Teague, Lou Williams and Khris Middleton as he does for Curry, Klay and Durant. His own offensive impact scores would still register as very high if these were his teammates. The difference, is, the TEAM'S output wouldn't be nearly as great, because the finishers would be closer to league average than all world. But Draymond's individual offensive impact, as a point-big-man, would stay similar.

Most of your points are valid, but this is off. And here's why.

Draymond's style of play is directly related to the amount of space he gets from being surrounded by such elite shooters. Defenses have to pick their poison. Draymond gets so much space to operate as a playmaker after setting the screen for Steph because Steph is simply too deadly from downtown. Klay and KD have massive gravity themselves.

If his teammates were Jeff Teague, Lou Williams and Khris Middleton, defenses wouldn't shy away from trying to give less space to Draymond. Which would then force him to produce countermoves, which he isn't really capable of. That changes the dynamic of his playing style entirely, thus changing his impact on offense.

[JackZZ]

Dray can't be first option. The pecking order in GSW alone literally make it impossible. Even if he was hypothetically 1st option (in which Curry, KD and Klay not in the team), i can't see GSW gets far anywhere.
The answer is Pippen by far. The man led Bulls to ECF.
You want to compare player like Scottie Pippen to Paul George or Kawhi Leonard.
Dray is comparable to Rodman, defensive specialist. Dray is a more evolved version of Rodman. Roleplayer.
Beside, Dray's career is not even finished. OP's question 'at peak' is like saying this is as good as it get for Dray. It's an incompatible comparison to begin with.

[NotReady]

People have already said it, but it deserves to be said again: Draymond is in the perfect situation for his offensive talents. He's obviously great defensively and in a good situation for his defensive skillset, but you could imagine an even better situation.

I am hard-pressed to imagine a better offensive situation for him to be in, though.97 Rockets, maybe?

[Warriors Analyst]

Dray can't be first option. The pecking order in GSW alone literally make it impossible. Even if he was hypothetically 1st option (in which Curry, KD and Klay not in the team), i can't see GSW gets far anywhere.
The answer is Pippen by far. The man led Bulls to ECF.
You want to compare player like Scottie Pippen to Paul George or Kawhi Leonard.
Dray is comparable to Rodman, defensive specialist. Dray is a more evolved version of Rodman. Roleplayer.
Beside, Dray's career is not even finished. OP's question 'at peak' is like saying this is as good as it get for Dray. It's an incompatible comparison to begin with.

There is not a single team in the NBA where Draymond would have to be the first option. Even if you took off a team's best player and replaced them with Draymond that statement holds true. Any team that forced Draymond into service as a first scoring option would probably have to be constructed in such a way that they'd struggle to win 20 games.

[cpower]

Draymond may be the best complementary player of all time though. Just look at his mutiyear RAPM - he is basically covering all the weakness of the warriors team..pretty damn amazing impact on the court
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12rcLDCaJSh_b1hA3UyLG5-neayTBl_weqNVCGM0LheA/edit#gid=0
Pippen is a much better offensive player if he is a 1st option, but if we are just talking about the 2nd guy they are pretty much neck and neck imo. Pippen dont have Green's rim protection and Green dont have Pippen's scoring. Thats why these superteams have Rodman and Klay to finish the puzzle.

[G35]

However, and this is key, DRAYMOND'S IMPACT ON THE OFFENSE WOULD BE JUST AS LARGE IF THE SHOOTERS HE WAS SETTING UP WEREN'T AS GOOD!

This is something that gets lost, often, when people say "yeah, but Draymond is in the perfect situation". Draymond would make life similarly easy for Jeff Teague, Lou Williams and Khris Middleton as he does for Curry, Klay and Durant. His own offensive impact scores would still register as very high if these were his teammates. The difference, is, the TEAM'S output wouldn't be nearly as great, because the finishers would be closer to league average than all world. But Draymond's individual offensive impact, as a point-big-man, would stay similar.

Most of your points are valid, but this is off. And here's why.

Draymond's style of play is directly related to the amount of space he gets from being surrounded by such elite shooters. Defenses have to pick their poison. Draymond gets so much space to operate as a playmaker after setting the screen for Steph because Steph is simply too deadly from downtown. Klay and KD have massive gravity themselves.

If his teammates were Jeff Teague, Lou Williams and Khris Middleton, defenses wouldn't shy away from trying to give less space to Draymond. Which would then force him to produce countermoves, which he isn't really capable of. That changes the dynamic of his playing style entirely, thus changing his impact on offense.

+1

I wanted to mention the amount of spacing he gets, but I forgot. That is another thing that should be accounted for with his playmaking. He is out on an island going against a PF or C and we should all be amazed at how many assists he gets? If Harden had that much space he would average 15 assists a game. In fact it is telling that when teams leave anyone open to shoot its always, ALWAYS Draymond....and he still is only shooting .357 from three...and his shots are always wide open.

If he was shooting better, if he finished better....maybe I could put him up against Scottie but he's crap at finishing and he's not a great outside shooter, particularly since he's always left wide open. Looking at the shooting numbers on the Warriors only Klay Thompson gets assisted more on his shots than Draymond but that is a function of Klay's role in the offense. If teams could force Draymond to beat them, they would do it.....

[Dr Spaceman]

However, and this is key, DRAYMOND'S IMPACT ON THE OFFENSE WOULD BE JUST AS LARGE IF THE SHOOTERS HE WAS SETTING UP WEREN'T AS GOOD!

This is something that gets lost, often, when people say "yeah, but Draymond is in the perfect situation". Draymond would make life similarly easy for Jeff Teague, Lou Williams and Khris Middleton as he does for Curry, Klay and Durant. His own offensive impact scores would still register as very high if these were his teammates. The difference, is, the TEAM'S output wouldn't be nearly as great, because the finishers would be closer to league average than all world. But Draymond's individual offensive impact, as a point-big-man, would stay similar.

Most of your points are valid, but this is off. And here's why.

Draymond's style of play is directly related to the amount of space he gets from being surrounded by such elite shooters. Defenses have to pick their poison. Draymond gets so much space to operate as a playmaker after setting the screen for Steph because Steph is simply too deadly from downtown. Klay and KD have massive gravity themselves.

If his teammates were Jeff Teague, Lou Williams and Khris Middleton, defenses wouldn't shy away from trying to give less space to Draymond. Which would then force him to produce countermoves, which he isn't really capable of. That changes the dynamic of his playing style entirely, thus changing his impact on offense.

This argument was reasonable in 2015, probably 2016 as well though to a lesser extent.

But now? The Warriors don’t even run pick and roll anymore. I believe they’re dead last in Pick and Roll frequency in the entire NBA. Draymond is just straight up the lead guard on this team, the offense runs through him.

So yeah he benefits from having elite scoring talent around him. As does every playmaker ever. But he’s had great playoff series without Steph. He’s had great games without KD. He’s had great games without either. He had 30 points in a game 7 of the Finals.

I guess I’ll put it this way: take Draymond off the Warriors and replace him with Jason Kidd. Do you think the team is better offensively?

[Dr Spaceman]

Also I just have to say: this might be the worst thread I’ve ever seen on RealGM PC forum. People are trying to have an honest debate, it’s a comparison of similar players with similar skills and roles, and yet you have a few people (or maybe just one...) just straight up trolling people and responding with memes. I come to this forum to get away from stupid crap like that, it’s truly embarrassing.