Jerry West calls Draymond Green top-10 player, most underrated in NBA
Warriors consultant Jerry West says Draymond Green is one of the 10 best players in the league.
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Golden State Warriors executive Jerry West called Draymond Green one of the 10 best players in the league when he appeared on KNBR radio this week. You can hear it at the 4:48 mark here.
"I think honestly we have two of the top 10 players in the league -- Draymond Green is the second one," West said. "He's the most underrated player in the NBA, period. There are very few players, I think, anyone in our organization would trade for him. He's just a remarkable player. Watch him handle the ball, watch him make passes, defensively he's everywhere. If he's not a top 10 player in this league, I don't know who is."
Green is certainly a top-10 player when it comes to versatility. Offensively, he's a 3-point threat, a great screener, an excellent passer and capable of making plays for himself and teammates off the dribble. Defensively, he can guard any position and is unafraid to battle against bigger players for rebounds. While he's not a traditional "star" because his role isn't to isolate and score, I'd argue that the five-year, $82 million contract he signed last summer was a bargain for the Warriors.
It's also worth noting that, according to ESPN's Real Plus-Minus, Green has been the fifth-best player in the league this season, behind Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, Kyle Lowry and LeBron James. He has a good chance to make his first All-Star Game in a few months, and he finished second to Kawhi Leonard in Defensive Player of the Year voting last year.
In CBS Sports' Elite 100, Green was ranked the 31st best player in the league. Since then, though, he's become a deadeye 3-point shooter, improved his ballhandling and helped the Warriors start the season better than any team in NBA history. If we ranked everybody again, perhaps he would indeed be in the top 10.
