Draymond Green‘s bid for a second NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award came up short.
The Warriors forward finished third in DPOY voting, losing out to Cleveland Cavaliers center Evan Mobley, the NBA announced Thursday.
Atlanta Hawks wing Dyson Daniels finished in second place behind Mobley and ahead of Green.
Green, 35, received 15 first-place votes, 20 second-place votes and finished with 154 total points, coming up short to Mobley’s 285 points and Daniels’ 197 points.
Green made a strong push to reclaim the top defensive honor, capturing the Western Conference’s Defensive Player of the Month Award in March.
In 68 regular-season games, Green averaged 9.0 points, 6.1 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.0 blocks in 29.2 minutes.
Green openly campaigned for himself over the season’s final few months, and it almost paid off.
Green spoke to NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole and Kerith Burke in late March about what a second DPOY award would mean to him.
“It would mean the world to me; you know I pride myself on the defensive end,” Green told Poole and Burke. “I think to be acknowledged as the best defender in this league is no small feat. It’s something that, I never pride myself on winning awards, but they never hurt the ego and they don’t hurt the pockets. But most importantly, even more so than that, I think all the hard work you put in to try and stay at an elite level, and to be recognized as the Defensive Player of the Year at 35, eight years after first doing it, it takes a lot of work and a lot of effort to have that type of longevity.”
As unlikely as Green’s first DPOY was in 2016-17, he understood how much more profound winning it eight years later would have been.
“To even be mentioned in that conversation, to me, is special,” Green said. “Obviously, I want to win it, but it’s not something that’s totally in my control … When I started to see my name pop up in the conversation, I was like, ‘Wow, I really have a chance to do this.’
“And I came into this season, for the last couple years I’ve been kind of priding myself on that. Like, ‘I want to win another one. I want to win another one.’ But obviously you have to have success as a team and just to find that success, put myself in the conversation. At worst, I want to make [All-Defensive First Team] and if I can put myself in the conversation to be DPOY, I think that would be crazier than winning the first one.”
Warriors coach Steve Kerr, on numerous occasions, has called Green the best defensive player he has ever been around, but the four-time NBA champion still has just one Defensive Player of the Year Award on his resume.
