Draymond Green is presenting some of the best assist numbers in the NBA so far this season, but has his decrease in pitch percentage been a problem for the Warriors’ attack?
Longtime warrior and Hall of Fame member Rick Barry believes so, and explained to 95.7 the game on Thursday morning why he believes Draymond has hurt the Warriors on that side of the court.
“The problem is that Draymond is not playing well now,” said Barry in “The Morning Roast”. “It’s not a good thing, I mean, if you look at his stats from two seasons ago, he’s falling in all categories, his minutes obviously fell, his shooting percentage dropped by 2, his shooting percentage dropped by 3 , his percentage of throws is below the free throw line, so he just needs to go back to playing at the level he played before.
“I mean, they really need him, now he has become a risk, even in that game, I mean, no one protects him, they force him to the 3-point line and they go away and he’s shooting 20-something percent from 3, I mean, why would you protect him out there, and it lessens his effectiveness, he needs to be able to take down some of those 3s, if you look back a few seasons ago, he was shooting 40 percent of the 3s to many times.
“So now he is a little shaken and I hope he can get back to where he was a few seasons ago, but now he is not helping that.”
Green has never been a 40 percent sniper with a 3-point range in his NBA career, at least not for an entire season, but Barry makes a fair point about Draymond’s shooting numbers.
The 31-year-old is throwing 37.2 percent off the pitch this season, the lowest mark of his career since his first NBA season, when he made just 32.7 percent of attempts. Green’s 22.2 percent mark in the city center is also the lowest since its debut year.
Green’s 71.1 percent mark on the free throw line aligns almost exactly with the percentage of his career on the line entering this season (71.0).
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Although it has become much less of a scoring threat in 2020-21 than we have seen in recent years, Green is accumulating assists with the best NBA distributors. Green is sixth in the NBA, averaging 8.4 assists per game.
Klay Thompson’s absence from the court over the past two seasons has increased the number of goals for Green as he has not recorded double digits in goals in one season since 2017-18.
Steph Curry’s numbers this season did not lead to much progress on the Warriors’ winning streak, which also led some, including Barry, it seems, to point the finger at Draymond.
Other problems, including inconsistency from the rest of the support cast and questionable adjustments (or lack thereof) of coach Steve Kerr influenced the Warriors’ inability to scale more than a game or two over 0.500.
Kerr spoke after Wednesday night’s victory over the Indiana Pacers about not needing Draymond to score “in general”, but that adding a few buckets doesn’t hurt on a night when the Warriors only hit five points out of 3 points.
It’s all the blame, and Draymond would probably be the first to say he wasn’t as productive as he expected this season, but his defensive intensity made the Warriors play best league defense in the last 15 games.
Being a more consistent sniper of three can help the Warriors attack, but there’s not much Draymond can do about the middle of the season other than simply earning a higher percentage. He never inspired much fear in opponents with his outside shots, even during his most successful seasons in the city center.
“Responsibility” may be an exaggeration in relation to Green, but Barry is a Hall of Fame and six times elected All-NBA, so his basketball acumen certainly qualifies him to analyze the game better than most.
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