RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #51 (Draymond Green)

[OhayoKD]

...
Yet he has no impact signals equivalent to peak Thurmond.

How do these impact signals rate Bobby Jones v. Draymond?

I couldn't find anything for bobby jones(statmuse keeps taking me to the sixers record) but for Draymond...

not really much wowy to use for draymond's peak peak but for his career, per statmuse, the warriors play like a .500 team without him and 55-team with. Not sure what the sample there is though on a per-season basis.

For what its worth, we do have a substantial "back-end of prime" sample for 2021 where the warriors go from a game under .500 without to a 45-win pace with and 2022 where the Warriors go from 17-15 without to a 60-win pace with.

Combined that gets the Warriors to .500 without Draymond Green(23-22) and 51-win with.

If we toss in the year he was minutes restricted(and the warriors were trying to lose) we get a 34 win pace without and a 45-win pace with Draymond scoring half as many points on worse effeciency than he did in 2016 when he was busting rapm and lineup-rating and on/off.

Roughly 11 win lift over a artifically depressed sample(2020 was thrown in) provides support for --peak-- Draymond being a pretty good floor-raiser beyond all that lineup stuff we have access to. Though enigma's probably right thurmond is more proven there.

[OhayoKD]

By my count it's Embiid 5, Payton 4 after secondary votes. AEnigma still hasn't specified his induction vote and I believe he's not too high on Embiid, and I don't really know what Doc will do with his second vote. And there are some other votes that haven't come in yet.

Could go either way here.

By my count the vote is currently(just looking at firsts and seconds)

Draymond -> 5(enigma, ohayo, shaqa 1st, samurai, tlreos 2nd)

Payton -> 6(clyde, trex, osnb, samurai 1st, enigma, wintasoilder 2nd)

Embiid -> 5 (Trleos, Wintasoilder HBK 1st, Ohayo, Penbeast 2nd)

a couple votes away from a 3-way deadlock

[WintaSoldier1]

As I involve myself further into this and While I participate not mentally prepared, I find myself struggling to make the right decision upon who to vote for. The political gains from voting for the right person at the right time, and the idea of wanting to protect the list from egregious mistakes has to be weighed on the conscious.

The separation between how people vote, [People who vote for Draymond tend to be more dependent on analytical indicators + value correlative success( as how much success is tied to your name), more than basketball instinct.]

While people who vote for Embidd are tantalized by his ability and usually value “Getting a bucket” over other basketball intangibles.

Voting for Payton seems to be the most safe and secured message, to consider ability while being fair to correlative success.

This was mostly a ramble b4 the end of this nomination period, but I’ll be aiding GP next round if he doesn’t get in

[AEnigma]

Draymond has excellent basketball instinct, just not for scoring.

[Doctor MJ]

Sorry folks having some issues with my primary computer. Voting the same as previous and don't want to delay things so I'm just going to type my votes and then make a tally post.

Induction Vote 1: Draymond Green
Induction Vote 2: Jimmy Butler

Nomination Vote 1: Paul Arizin
Nomination Vote 2: Dave Cowens

[Doctor MJ]

Induction Vote 1:

Green - 4 (AEnigma, Ohayo, ShaqA, Doc)
Payton - 4 (trex, Samurai, Clyde, OSNB)
Embiid - 3 (trelos, HBK, Winta)
Jimmy - 1 (beast)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Green & Payton.

Green - 1 (trelos)
Payton - 1 (Winta)
neither - 2 (HBK, beast)

Still no leader. We'll have to do a runoff between Draymond Green and Gary Payton.

I'm not in a position to easily make a complicated post alerting other posters who didn't vote so I'll just edit the project title in a minute. if anyone would be willing to alert posters to come break the tie, I'd appreciate it.

Nomination Vote 1:

Cowens - 1 (AEnigma)
Gasol - 1 (trex)
Mutombo - 1 (trelos)
Arizin - 3 (Samurai, OSNB, Doc)
Walton - 2 (HBK, ShaqA)
Bobby - 1 (beast)
Gervin - 2 (Winta, Clyde)
none - 1 (Ohayo)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Arizin, Walton & Gervin:

Arizin - 0 (none)
Walton - 0 (none)
Gervin - 1 (AEnigma)
none - (trex, trelos, beast, Ohayo)

Eliminating. Continuing between Arizin & Gervin:

Arizin - 0 (none)
Gervin - 0 (none)
none - 0 (HBK, ShaqA)

Still tied. Paul Arizin 3, George Gervin 3.

Both Arizin & Gervin will be added to the next Nominee list.
No Nomination vote will be held next round.

[homecourtloss]

Vote: Draymond Green
Alt vote: Bob Lanier


Draymond’s Case

We have too many pieces of data, including RAPM with confidence levels, playoffs only RAPM, effect on win probability, etc., to not seriously consider Draymond here.

Regular Season



1. Lebron, 5.54, 274K Poss
2. KG, 5.1, 206K Poss
3. CP3, 4.8, 181K Poss
4. Steph, 4.7, 142K Poss
5. Duncan, 4.7, 241K Poss
6. Manu, 4.3, 131K Poss
7. Draymond, 4.25, 110K Poss
8. PG, 4.05, 126K Poss
9. Dirk, 3.89, 238K Poss
10, Lillard, 3.87, 112K Poss
HM: Harden, Shaq, Lowry

Playoffs



1. Lebron, 5.9, 41K Poss
2. Draymond, 5.5, 18K Poss
3. Manu, 5.2, 23K Poss
4. KG, 4.8, 19K Poss
5. Duncan, 4.3, 34K Poss
6. Curry, 4.2, 17K Poss
7. Harden, 4.1, 22k Poss
8. Shaq, 3.9, 24K Poss
9. KD, 3.7, 24K Poss
10. PG, 3.2, 16K Poss
HM: Allen, Danny Green, Westbrook

Biggest Risers (Using graph 2 RS)

1. Draymond, +1.2
2. Rondo, +.9
3. Manu, +.8
4. Billups, +.7
5. Prince, +.7
6. Horry, +.6
7. Danny Green, +.6
8. Lebron, +.3
9. Harden, +.3
10. Westbrook, +3
HM: Allen, Wade, Shaq

Notes

-> Lebron, Manu, and Draymond are the only players with a top-10 rs score to see an increase in their playoffs. That increase would have been higher for all 3 if I'd used graph 1 instead of graph 2.

2015, 2016, and 2017 Draymond in the playoffs:


In JE’s RS+PS 1997-2022 RAPM set, there is tiny set of players who are -4 career defense impact players and the majority of them are negatives on offense, or are basically neutral. A player who can be a monster defensive impact player, and be a positive impact offensive player is a unicorn, a unicorn who is going to give your team a chance to win over a long stretch of time.

In JE’s set, we have nearly 2,500 player careers and out of these players, only TWO have a +2.0 or better ORAPM, and a -4 or better DRAPM, i.e., KG and Duncan. We only have three who are +1.5 or better ORAPM, and a -4 or better DRAPM, i.e., KG, Tim, and Draymond.



And of course his overall impact



Often people bring up that he is not a “rim protecting specialist,” but Draymond’s does provide a paint presence and rim protection, while also being one of the greatest defensive communicators of the past 25 years, allowing him to quarterback defenses.



If you go through the seasons from 2015 through 2023, you see some elite tracking numbers for how much worse opponents shot against Draymond vs. everyone else for shots under 6 feet and under 10 feet from the rim. Pick any of the seasons at random; those numbers on the far right over there:







[/quote]

We saw this in the 2022 finals versus the Boston Celtics:

Nobody was making anything against Draymond these playoffs, especially in the paint or near the rim:



And the Celtics didn’t do much better:



Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brown hated going up against him:




Earlier in the 2022 playoffs, Draymond was the only one who could slow down Jokić in a little bit, shooting 67% against everybody else:



I could go on, but one last thing is JE’s study a player’s effect on win probability
[/quote][/quote][/quote]

[OldSchoolNoBull]

I'm not in a position to easily make a complicated post alerting other posters who didn't vote so I'll just edit the project title in a minute. if anyone would be willing to alert posters to come break the tie, I'd appreciate it.

Here you go - just quoted you from one of the last runoffs and modified:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

As well as

.

.

[penbeast0]

Still no leader. We'll have to do a runoff between Draymond Green and Gary Payton.

Runoff Vote: Draymond Green

[f4p]

Runoff Vote: Draymond

Even though Gary Payton played for a Sonics team that beat my Rockets something fierce in the mid-90s (12 straight wins, 2 season sweeps in 1995 and 1996 and a playoff sweep in 1996, including a game where they shot 20-27 on 3's and hit 13 straight at one point, which I'm pretty sure is still a record, and we were actually leading the game after they made the 13th straight), it's hard to get over following up one of the biggest SRS upsets ever in 1994 (while being up 2-0 on the nuggets) with another one of the biggest SRS upsets ever in 1995 to the lakers. i have probably always underrated payton a little, despite the beatings he gave us, because it just seemed like there was always going to come that moment in the playoffs with 5 minutes to go where his team was going to have to rely on too many 20 foot payton jumpers that he just couldn't make.

but a few weeks/months ago, someome started a thread about where we would rank draymond. and i said about 50th. and this is about 50th. the warriors won too much for their second best player to not be great. and while klay is very good, he did not make the defense elite and had plenty of offensive slumps in the playoffs. and the warriors kept trucking. not much else to point to except draymond. and then after that 30,000 foot view, you dig in and get that the impact metrics say prime draymond was a god. and the eye test says he was just unbelievable defensively and extremely high IQ offensively (even if he somehow forgot how to shoot after 2016). so without payton having electric playoff performances to offset the massive disappointments with absolutely wide open fields in 1994 and 1995, i'm going with draymond.

[WintaSoldier1]

Runoff Vote: Draymond

Even though Gary Payton played for a Sonics team that beat my Rockets something fierce in the mid-90s (12 straight wins, 2 season sweeps in 1995 and 1996 and a playoff sweep in 1996, including a game where they shot 20-27 on 3's and hit 13 straight at one point, which I'm pretty sure is still a record, and we were actually leading the game after they made the 13th straight), it's hard to get over following up one of the biggest SRS upsets ever in 1994 (while being up 2-0 on the nuggets) with another one of the biggest SRS upsets ever in 1995 to the lakers. i have probably always underrated payton a little, despite the beatings he gave us, because it just seemed like there was always going to come that moment in the playoffs with 5 minutes to go where his team was going to have to rely on too many 20 foot payton jumpers that he just couldn't make.

but a few weeks/months ago, someome started a thread about where we would rank draymond. and i said about 50th. and this is about 50th. the warriors won too much for their second best player to not be great. and while klay is very good, he did not make the defense elite and had plenty of offensive slumps in the playoffs. and the warriors kept trucking. not much else to point to except draymond. and then after that 30,000 foot view, you dig in and get that the impact metrics say prime draymond was a god. and the eye test says he was just unbelievable defensively and extremely high IQ offensively (even if he somehow forgot how to shoot after 2016). so without payton having electric playoff performances to offset the massive disappointments with absolutely wide open fields in 1994 and 1995, i'm going with draymond.

This is similar to the phenomena I was referring to back earlier to Jimmy Butler in a response to Doctor MJ.

Where as a person we cannot understand the phenomena/skillset of a player( in this case Draymond) and the casual ends up underrating the player because they cannot be traditionally understood. The “non-casual” often overrates their value in order to combat the casual viewers perspective. What I’m insinuating is that we can’t just give all the “credit” (as in importance) to the warriors success to Draymond. because we ourselves cannot understand the phenomenon on the floor and most convenient way to proceed is to give Draymond all the “floating”(as in non-assigned credit) phenomena.

I am considering Draymond heavily here and I currently lean to him and have had a turn in thought about how I view his connective tissue ability, but come on in all these analytical posts all I see is lazy interpretations of what’s actually happening to justify Draymond as a top 50 player ever.

[f4p]

Runoff Vote: Draymond

Even though Gary Payton played for a Sonics team that beat my Rockets something fierce in the mid-90s (12 straight wins, 2 season sweeps in 1995 and 1996 and a playoff sweep in 1996, including a game where they shot 20-27 on 3's and hit 13 straight at one point, which I'm pretty sure is still a record, and we were actually leading the game after they made the 13th straight), it's hard to get over following up one of the biggest SRS upsets ever in 1994 (while being up 2-0 on the nuggets) with another one of the biggest SRS upsets ever in 1995 to the lakers. i have probably always underrated payton a little, despite the beatings he gave us, because it just seemed like there was always going to come that moment in the playoffs with 5 minutes to go where his team was going to have to rely on too many 20 foot payton jumpers that he just couldn't make.

but a few weeks/months ago, someome started a thread about where we would rank draymond. and i said about 50th. and this is about 50th. the warriors won too much for their second best player to not be great. and while klay is very good, he did not make the defense elite and had plenty of offensive slumps in the playoffs. and the warriors kept trucking. not much else to point to except draymond. and then after that 30,000 foot view, you dig in and get that the impact metrics say prime draymond was a god. and the eye test says he was just unbelievable defensively and extremely high IQ offensively (even if he somehow forgot how to shoot after 2016). so without payton having electric playoff performances to offset the massive disappointments with absolutely wide open fields in 1994 and 1995, i'm going with draymond.

This is similar to the phenomena I was referring to back earlier to Jimmy Butler in a response to Doctor MJ.

Where as a person we cannot understand the phenomena/skillset of a player( in this case Draymond) and the casual ends up underrating the player because they cannot be traditionally understood. The “non-casual” often overrates their value in order to combat the casual viewers perspective. What I’m insinuating is that we can’t just give all the “credit” (as in importance) to the warriors success to Draymond. because we ourselves cannot understand the phenomenon on the floor and most convenient way to proceed is to give Draymond all the “floating”(as in non-assigned credit) phenomena.

i'm not giving him all the credit. i'm saying that somehow the warriors won a lot. that must be based on the contributions of their players. steph is very good but not good enough to do this without a very good 2nd player. and i don't think klay is enough to explain the situation without draymond being very, very good. now we can see lots of things draymond does - defending at the rim, defending on switches, by all accounts directing the entire defense, high IQ passer on offense with great synergy with steph - and conclude he must be good. but when we get impact metrics that then also confirm the eye test and the winning, it all adds up to making sense that draymond must be great. now we've got longevity issues and "perfect fit" issues, because otherwise he should probably be like top 35.

in fact, all of the warriors are difficult to evaluate because the fit created by the organization ended up being perfect (which i think was mostly luck, not some grand plan as different GM's drafted the players, they were drafted for a different coach, and the owner seems to be a tech bro blowhard more than a basketball genius), making all of them look better than they probably truly are. which leads to warriors fans sometimes rightly complaining that their favorite players are held back in evaluations because they "have too much talent" but then each individual gets talked down like they aren't that great, which seem to be contradictory claims. but the fit element is probably the missing secret sauce that other players simply aren't gifted with like steph/draymond/klay were gifted with. you basically got the 2 most synergistic great players ever in steph and draymond and then got a reasonable facsimile of it in klay and iggy and all 4 were perfect together. throw in 3 years of KD at the one weak position and you can see where the winning comes from. but still, it's enough winning that a top 11-15 steph would probably need a top 50-ish sidekick to explain it all. and the impact metrics say the explanation is draymond. which the defensive greatness (and keeping it up in the playoffs) say is draymond. which the eye test says is draymond.

[Rishkar]

Induction Vote 1:

Green - 4 (AEnigma, Ohayo, ShaqA, Doc)
Payton - 4 (trex, Samurai, Clyde, OSNB)
Embiid - 3 (trelos, HBK, Winta)
Jimmy - 1 (beast)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Green & Payton.

Green - 1 (trelos)
Payton - 1 (Winta)
neither - 2 (HBK, beast)

Still no leader. We'll have to do a runoff between Draymond Green and Gary Payton.

I'm not in a position to easily make a complicated post alerting other posters who didn't vote so I'll just edit the project title in a minute. if anyone would be willing to alert posters to come break the tie, I'd appreciate it.

Nomination Vote 1:

Cowens - 1 (AEnigma)
Gasol - 1 (trex)
Mutombo - 1 (trelos)
Arizin - 3 (Samurai, OSNB, Doc)
Walton - 2 (HBK, ShaqA)
Bobby - 1 (beast)
Gervin - 2 (Winta, Clyde)
none - 1 (Ohayo)

No majority. Going to Vote 2 between Arizin, Walton & Gervin:

Arizin - 0 (none)
Walton - 0 (none)
Gervin - 1 (AEnigma)
none - (trex, trelos, beast, Ohayo)

Eliminating. Continuing between Arizin & Gervin:

Arizin - 0 (none)
Gervin - 0 (none)
none - 0 (HBK, ShaqA)

Still tied. Paul Arizin 3, George Gervin 3.

Both Arizin & Gervin will be added to the next Nominee list.
No Nomination vote will be held next round.

Vote Payton
Layed out my argument last round, I'm really high on Payton's defense.

[iggymcfrack]

Vote: Gary Payton
Payton has 2.47x as many VORP as Draymond in 2.12x as many minutes. That's enough to convince me that he has a huge longevity edge. With that big of a longevity edge, Draymond would need to be very clearly better at peak to deserve the spot and he's just not. Their peaks are actually relatively close to the point that you could argue either way.

[WintaSoldier1]

Vot: Gary Payton

I feel like I’ve been antagonistic towards Draymond and his game but I’ve had a epiphany and have a better view of him, but still I value GP more.

[Doctor MJ]

Okay, tallying up - ftr folks, you don't need to vote again if you're already being counted for one of the two guys in the existing tally vote.

Green - (hcl, beast, f4p)
Payton - (Rishkar, iggy)

Looks to me like our total tally is Green 8, Payton 7.

Draymond Green is Inducted at #51.

[HeartBreakKid]

Really close vote!

Just an interesting tidbid, because this shows that some of the information here does make a tangible difference in the voting process

I had voted for Payton over Green in the past for alternate votes. But recent threads that made good points about Green while also highlighting why Payton might not be as valuable made me at least abstain from voting in the runoff.

If I had voted as I had 7 threads ago or whatever, Payton and Green would have went to the next stage of the tie breaker.

[trex_8063]

I don't mean this to be a dig, though this IS a concern/criticism that was brought up by those against him going this high. These things cost (as the talking heads discuss).
Anyway, this feels right on cue to his placement here (which yes: I was one of the people objecting to this placement). Interesting discussion, at any rate....

Watch on YouTube

[Colbinii]

I don't mean this to be a dig, though this IS a concern/criticism that was brought up by those against him going this high. These things cost (as the talking heads discuss).
Anyway, this feels right on cue to his placement here (which yes: I was one of the people objecting to this placement). Interesting discussion, at any rate....

Watch on YouTube

Yup--it is a very huge blackmark that is only growing. I still love him at his peak as a player [Not quite Eminence level high, but still Top 5-ish player in 2016 high] but for career value, yikes!

[AEnigma]

The timing is… funny? Fortuitous for his supporters, annoying for his detractors. This probably could have cost him a couple of spots; I suspect the earlier incident with Gobert already did.

Makes his 2024 value pretty strained, if nothing else, but for as much as we can label it as a predictable continuance, this is a significant behavioural low, and had he any real equivalent in prior years, that would have capped people’s assessment of those years too. We can joke about “natural kicking motion” and everything, but those comparative peccadilloes are much easier to look past than the visceral intentionality of these recent violences.