Draymond Green might win Defensive Player of the Year on the strength of what has happened to his team in games he didn’t play.
Through the first 37 games of the year, the Warriors were leading the league in defensive efficiency, with a 103.4 defensive rating, according to Basketball-Reference. On January 5, Green played his last full game. (He took the court for a few seconds on January 9 for Klay Thompson’s first game back, but we’re not counting that.) In the team’s 27 games since January 6, Golden State’s defensive rating is 110.7. Their season-long rating is all the way up to 106.5, and for the first time since November, they no longer have the league’s best defense.
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