Hoops Lab: Is Draymond Green the Real MVP?

"I'm back! I'm back!"

The lasting image of Monday night's Warriors-Trail Blazers game was Stephen Curry, celebrating one of his many dagger 3-pointers by pointing at the court and yelling "I'm back" over and over. Curry, who didn't start the game and was questionable to play at all, had just finished completely taking over the action. He knocked down five 3-pointers in 37 minutes, on his way to a whopping 40 points, nine boards and eight assists. In the second half everything ran through Curry, and he seemed like he was everywhere as the Warriors came back from a big first-half deficit to pull out the game in overtime. Curry was magical.

The magic continued Wednesday as Curry scored 29 points, hitting 5 of 11 3-pointers and dishing out 11 assists, to lead the Warriors past the Blazers in five games and advance to the Western Conference finals.

A day earlier, NBA history was made with Curry winning the NBA MVP award unanimously. No player had ever received every first-place vote for MVP, until Curry did so with his incredible 2016 campaign. By unanimous acclaim, Stephen Curry is by far the most valuable player in the NBA.

Or is he?

To most people's "eye test," he is. To pretty much every member of the NBA media, to the league's players, even to the "basketball nerds" that love the boxscore stats, he is. In fact, let's take a look at some of the superlative-heavy stats-based articles that have been published on Curry's 2016 season.

In early March, when Curry broke his own record for most 3-pointers in a season with six weeks left, the New York Times posted an article comparing Curry's 3-point wizardry in basketball to Babe Ruth's home run barrage in baseball or Wayne Gretzky's scoring rampage in hockey. When the season ended, the N.Y. Times published another piece showing just how bizarrely off the charts it was for Curry to break his own 3-pointers made record by such a huge margin, claiming that according to the natural progression of 3-pointers made no one should have broken 400 made treys until well into the mid 2030s. Tom Haberstroh published an excellent piece on ESPN that went through a plethora of numbers that show the unique dominance of Curry, from his shooting efficiency from all over the court in a variety of situations, the way that he takes advantage of screens, the way that he creates off the pass, his Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and even hockey assists (e.g. making the pass before the pass that leads to a bucket). In December, yours truly also weighed in on the ridiculousness of Curry's game. I, like many others, am a big fan of Curry and what he does.

But (you knew a "but" was coming, or else what would be the point of this article?), there is one problem to this mass coronation for Curry as the MVP. The Most Valuable Player, to me, connotes the player that is ... well ...the most valuable to their team winning. And while it is logical to assume that all of Curry's shooting exploits and boxscore production should correlate strongly to team success (which it does), there is actually a body of statistics that attempt to directly measure how much a player's presence on the court correlates with improvements in his team's scoring margin.

There are several types and levels of these +/- based stats, each with different levels of granularity and focuses. And over both of Curry's MVP seasons, he has generally not measured out at the top of the league in these stats. He hasn't even measured out at the top of his own team. According to most +- stats, Draymond Green is most valuable Warrior this season.

Raw on-court/off-court +/-:

Stephen Curry: +22.2 (2nd in NBA)
Draymond Green: +25.6 (1st in NBA)

Prior-informed Regularized Adjusted +/- (RAPM):

Stephen Curry: +6.16 (2nd in NBA)
Draymond Green: +7.93 (1st in NBA)

ESPN's RPM stat (RAPM, but with boxscore stats used as prior)

Stephen Curry: +8.33 (4th in NBA)
Draymond Green: +9.06 (1st in NBA)

Over and over, with different +/- approaches, Green keeps measuring as having a larger impact on the Warriors' scoring margin than Curry in 2016. Even ESPN's RPM, which is more influenced by the boxscore data that favors Curry, ranks Green ahead with LeBron James, Chris Paul, Curry and Kawhi Leonard filling out the top 5. But we shouldn't just take stats at face value, especially when they at first blush seems so counter-intuitive. So let's take a step back and examine whether this line of logic could even make sense.

In January, I wrote about Green and just how important he is to the Warriors. I pointed out how terrible the Warriors have looked when Green sits, such as the stretch when they sat him for two games, then lost to the lottery-bound Nuggets in the first such game and hurried him back before they played the Lakers.

Green's unique skill set makes a lot of what Curry does, much more effective. The articles I linked above points out that, by the numbers, Curry and Green are the most deadly pick-and-roll partners in the NBA. This is in large part because of Curry's ability to finish from long range, but it is also in large part because of how Green attacks defenses (in ways that 99 percent of big men can't) when the defense shifts to Curry. Green is excellent as a floor general, and also excellent as a pick-setter to the point where a colleague of mine said that Curry's 3-point percentage is more than 10 percent higher when Green is on the court than when he is off. I haven't corroborated that statement, but I believe it. It fits my eye test.

Have you ever paid attention to what happens before Curry's 3-pointers? I have. I remember one game in particular, when Curry hit seven 3-pointers in the first half. The highlights of his 3-pointers broadcast at halftime showed all were either off a direct Green screen or off a Green pass.

Green is essentially playing point guard on offense for the Warriors, but from a big man position. But in addition to Green's importance to the Warriors' offense, he is also one of the league's most dominant defensive players . He has now finished runner-up in the Defensive Player of the Year race in consecutive seasons, and his ranking as one of the best defenders in the NBA is completely deserved based upon the stats. Big men who are excellent, high-impact defenders have historically been among the highest impact players in the league.

So, let's put Green's contributions and roles together and consider whether Green could secretly be the highest impact player in the NBA. In addition to playing point guard on offense, and dominant big man on defense, Green is also the Warriors' unquestioned and not-at-all quiet leader. Oh, and by the way, he knocks down almost 40 percent of his own 3-point shots while manning a big man slot, making him one of the better offensive spacing threats in the NBA. While it is great for a team's spacing to have a guard who is a 3-point threat, it is even better to have a big man because he pulls an opposing big man out of the lane to defend him and, thus, breaks down what defenses want to do.

Green, therefore, represents an extremely unique combination of FOUR major ways that players have historically registered mega impacts. To help illustrate this, let's look at two of those methods: being a high-post floor general as a big man and playing dominant defense. According to Basketball Reference, here is the list of NBA forward-centers with at least five assists who also were credible Defensive Player of the Year candidates:

Bill Russell
Wilt Chamberlain
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Bill Walton
Kevin Garnett
Joakim Noah (2014)
Draymond Green

That's it. Outside of Noah in 2014, the list consists of five of the greatest big men in NBA history, all of whom were MVP winners and centerpieces of championship teams. So yes, there is definitely historical precedent for a player who does what Green does to be a mega impact player on the court. And when we now return to the +/- stats, we see that Green is in fact having a monster impact on the Warriors' fortunes. And this showed up in the postseason, when Green led the Warriors to an easy first-round win over the Rockets and a 2–1 lead over the Trail Blazers in the second round when Curry was out. Maybe it wasn't hyperbole when after Game 1 teammate Andrew Bogut declared that Green is "probably the best all-around player in the league."

Does Curry make a monster impact for the Warriors? Absolutely. In addition to the eye test and every boxscore record that Curry shatters, the +/- based impact stats also support him as one of the biggest impact players in the NBA. However, a closer examination lends credence to those same +/- stats that rank Green as the most impactful player in the NBA this season. The Warriors need both at full strength to win a title ... and Curry has all of the hardware and acclaim that will mark him as one of the greatest players of all time.

But when it comes to most valuable? I think Green has a very, very strong argument that he should have been the choice this season, even over his unanimously acclaimed teammate.

Keeping up with the Professor

If you're interested in my takes throughout the week, follow me on Twitter @ProfessorDrz. Also, remember you can catch me on the radio on Rotowire Fantasy Sports Today with Chris Liss and Jeff Erickson on XM 87, Sirius 210 on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. Plus, I'm doing DFS articles just about every day on the site. I co-host the Rotowire fantasy basketball podcast on Wednesdays and the TYT basketball show on the weekends.