Draymond Green walks the fine line of madness in the NBA Playoffs

Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Draymond Green can see into the future in the NBA Playoffs.

Darren Aronofsky is America’s first and foremost master of misery, an expert at making slick and gorgeous things that make us feel absolutely terrible. The closest he ever came to a pure pop confection was The Wrestler, a 2008 comeback vehicle Mickey Rourke should’ve won an Oscar for about an old, broken down, sadomasochistic WWE type on the margins of the industry who only loves the ring. He’s fucked up his life and his career, and he’s ruined his body. He’s told at one point in the film that his heart can’t take much more of the stress he applies to it when he performs, that even one more match could kill him, and he has to decide whether to live a life on someone else’s terms, or sacrifice it all to live the only way he knows how. His plight is not unlike the one that faces Warriors wing, point forward, center, and resident tortured genius, Draymond Green.

If you’re in search of historic parables for Draymond, you can look further afield than the NBA and arthouse pop from the aughts. The hero with an ingrained fatal flaw, who must sacrifice everything to do the thing he loves the only way he knows how to do it, is common throughout Marvel and DC’s modern mythology and dates back to both American and Greek folk tales. It’s rich soil for story, the inherent contradiction of the extraordinary unconventional man attempting to quiet the tempest in his head and heart long enough to achieve conventional success on his own terms.

Draymond is frequently vilified, easily misunderstood. He’s as disruptive in his own locker room (both with his play and his podcast) as his opponent’s. He arguably, single handedly cost his franchise a championship. He’s short for his position (whatever that may be), he’s never been particularly fast, he’s not a good shooter, there may only be one team in the league he has and has ever had value for, and now, on top of everything else, he’s old and expensive. And yet, his value to the Warriors dynasty is as significant as the player that is currently being discussed and debated as one of the 10 best who have ever lived. How did this happen?

Let’s briefly zoom out and consider Draymond’s origin story. He grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, a 19th century lumber hub that became a Chevrolet town in the 20th century and apparently makes nothing in the 21st century, that I mainly know as a place Paul Simon hitchhiked from once, and with a modest Google skim reads like a standard middle American post-industrial nightmare realm now primarily notable for producing Draymond Green.

At Saginaw High School, Draymond led his team to two consecutive Michigan High School championships. He stayed in state, took his talents an hour down the road to East Lansing, and played for (who else?) Tom Izzo, one of the more perfect pairings of college player and college coach you’ll ever see. Under Izzo, Draymond transformed his habits, and his body (kind of!) and was named Big Ten Player of the Year as a senior, averaging a double-double at 20 and 12.

But have you ever actually watched any tape of Draymond when he was a freshman at Michigan State? It’s crazy. Take a look:

When you go back and read his pre-draft scouting report in 2012, they more or less get it right: Undersized to guard 4s, not fast enough guard 3s, lacks athleticism and could be in better shape, can’t create his own shot, and when he gets an open look, it’s not a guarantee it will go in. His player comp is Boris Diaw, and the key sentence is, with his intangibles, he has the ability to impact the game and could conceivably carve out space for himself as a productive role player. The Warriors drafted him 35th.

LeBron James is commonly understood as the smartest basketball player of his generation, a savant and a genius, which is absolutely true, but I’d argue on a court, genius is easier to come by if you’re also the greatest athlete who ever played the sport. That is to say an intellect housed in a body that can do seemingly anything you ask of it is, to a certain extent, easy to operate. When you combine that incredible machine with genius, you get the greatest basketball player who ever lived. But in comparison, Draymond’s gifts, or lack thereof, are arguably more impressively applied when considering all he has gotten out of them.

Draymond’s elite skill, really more of a superpower, is precognition. His closest comparison, in terms of that elite skill, is Chris Paul, both men can instantly map a floor in three dimensions and know not just where every player on the court is at all times, but where they’re going before they get there. It’s why he’s one of the greatest passing forwards of all-time, but its true value is applied to his tremendous defense. Draymond helps you understand that truly great defense is not a matter of wingspan, vertical leap, or height, but anticipation. Knowing where your man, and all the other men on the floor, want to go, what they want to do, and how they historically tend to accomplish getting there, then fucking up all their plans. Consider the straight jacket he applied to All-Star and MVP candidate Domas Sabonis in the first round, and watch this clip of Draymond blowing up a Sabonis Fox pick and roll in Game 4:

But the knowledge isn’t enough. You also have to push your frail and eminently human body to its absolute breaking point amongst these Gods and monsters for that information to do any good, to act on it in the milliseconds before the market shifts, and this requires an on 10, pedal-floored intensity at all times that has made this tweener wing who is eye level with Kevin Knox’s nipples a Defensive Player of the Year and one of the most powerful defensive forces in league history. It requires working in a state of constant frenzy, each possession a white knuckle thrill ride, sprinting from one spot on the floor to the next, closing out on shooters like a free safety, diving in passing lanes, and challenging men with a foot on you at the rim. I can only imagine the human cost of that level of stress for over a decade as a constant is incalculable.

From afar, and even from up close depending on the stupidity of the observer, there is a breed of talking head that is flummoxed, or annoyed by Draymond. They see a brilliant conversationalist, a level-headed analyst of basketball off court, then they see this rabid animal, this bundle of misplaced aggression and unchecked emotion, decleating teammates in practice with a right cross, treating the testicles of countless opponents as a speedbag, trying to stomp a hole in the chest of poor, aforementioned Domas, and they bemoan “If only he could drop the antics and shenanigans, what a leader, what a force for light and good in basketball he could be.” And that sentiment is a near criminal misunderstanding of both basketball and human nature because that essence, that fire, whatever it is that gets Draymond to the spot he needs to get to on the floor before someone taller, stronger, and faster gets there, is what makes him a lunatic.

It’s both a bug and a feature, a superpower and tragic flaw. It drives his teammates and coaches insane, annoys fans and pundits, often hurts his team’s chances, but without it, he’d be coaching high school basketball in Saginaw. Who could forget this flagrant mistake against Cleveland in Game 4 of the 2016 Finals?:

And now, perhaps appropriately, he’s matched against his bizarro ubermensch counterpart in a matchup that could change the way we think about the legacy of both players. Or that is to say, LeBron’s Legacy vs. the legacy of Draymond’s beloved teammate Steph, who reaps accolades and praise and continues to climb a historical ladder he never could’ve approached without his firebrand garbageman who you fear will end up as a footnote, an afterthought. It’s an aggravated case of “Pippen’s Disease”, because Pippen recently made the Top 75 list of all-time players, and Klay was jokingly ranked as No. 76, and Durant may even end up ranked above Steph all-time, but even when they eventually extend the list out to 100, it’s a near certainty Draymond Green won’t be on it. And you have to at least have some sympathy for the misguided voters who even were able to watch his greatness on court and loftily declare, “Eh, apologies, he’s no Billy Cunningham”, because there’s no way to lead the league, to break records for “Most Intangibles”.

And so Draymond may not be playing for legacy this season, but one expects it will hardly matter to him. He’s driven by deeper and darker motivating factors than something as abstract as legacy. He’s a player who approaches every half court set like a fight in the mud for a knife. Ironically, for a player who has made a career out of seeing a few seconds into the future, that is the grand extent of his vision, each play is a play for survival, because for Draymond it has to be, and the Warriors will only go as far as that intensity, that vision, will take them.

As his offense has dwindled, as nearly everything has dwindled, and the antics threatened to overtake the ability, the chatter rose again around his value, chatter that has followed him his entire life. That the scales had finally tipped and it’s time to accept a smaller role and prepare for the end. And they may be right. There’s a real possibility that the capped out Warriors will decide after this year they’ve wrung all the bullshit and brilliance out of him, and the contract that’s been hanging over this season will have to be found elsewhere. But then he’s manic and disruptive and impossible in a seven game triumph against the upstart Kings that you’ll never be able to read in a box score, and we’re all reminded that in the pressure cooker of the playoffs and a long series, value takes on an entirely different meaning, and it helps to have an insane genius next to you in the proverbial foxhole (II).

The final shot in The Wrestler is Mickey Rourke balanced precariously on a post above the ring, his opponent lying prostrate on the mat, awaiting a signature elbow drop from a great height, that we’re made to understand will kill our tragic hero. His last match is set in a dank gym. He has chased away everyone who ever mattered in his life. He’s ruined a once great career, and all that is left is the love of the crowd, and the love of the game. Rourke looks around at his adoring fans once more, working them up, reveling in the only thing he was ever good at, and the only thing that has ever mattered to him, then makes one final demand from his eminently human body, and leaps into eternity.