2017 NBA Awards show: Draymond Green wins NBA Defensive Player of the Year

The 2017 NBA Awards show was on Monday night, and Draymond Green was given the award for Defensive Player of the Year for the first time in his career.

“It’s about damn time.” Those are the thoughts probably running through Draymond Green’s head as he wins his first (of many, probably) Defensive Player of the Year award. The last two years, the Warriors’ defensive stud has fell short to the Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard.

In 2014-15, Green was 16 points behind Leonard, while in 2015-16, Green fell further behind the reigning champion. This past season, the subtraction of Andrew Bogut and addition of Kevin Durant meant less offensive work but far more defensive work for Green.

He responded in a big way. This past season, Green was the unquestioned leader of the Warriors’ second-ranked defense during the regular season. Here are a few advanced statistics to truly show the effect that Green has on the Warriors: His defensive box plus/minus, which shows the number of defensive points contributes above league average, was a plus-5.0. His defensive win shares, which show the amount of wins Green added because of his defense, was plus-5.4. Both of these metrics were the highest in the Warriors star’s career.

The race finished just as we had expected, with Green winning the award and Gobert following as a close second place. Throughout the entire NBA season, the conversation had been between those two defensive stars, and Green bested Gobert in the voting numbers.

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It follows what we had seen for the NBA’s All-Defensive teams, which were announced earlier on Monday. Green and Gobert were neck and neck, for the highest number of votes received, with the Warriors’ star receiving a few more.

Both are great defenders, but the Defensive Player of the Year award resides in the Green residence in Oakland, CA this year.