Why Steve Kerr calls Draymond Green the GOAT defender he has ever seen

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr has seen a lot of basketball in his lifetime. From his multiple championships playing alongside Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls to his multiple championships coaching Stephen Curry and the Warriors.

Throughout his time in the NBA, Kerr says no one has been a better defender than Warriors star Draymond Green.

“He’s the best defensive player I’ve ever seen,” Kerr told the New Yorker in an exclusive interview. “And that’s saying a lot, given that I played with Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. The modern game demands so much more than it did in the nineties. You have to be able to guard all five positions, because there’s so much pace and energy and crossmatches. You race back on defense, you’ve got to guard the guy in front of you. And then there’s the ‘pick-on’ game: the opposing team is going to bring the weakest defender into every pick-and-roll to gain an advantage. Draymond, he can guard any action, any position, any player. And he can also blow up the play behind the play if he’s not involved in the action because of his brain, his speed, his reach.”

Green is listed at 6-foot-6 and 230 lbs, but has a 7-foot-1 wingspan that has allowed him to become one of the most elite disruptors the NBA has ever seen.

“[He has a] Seven-one wingspan, incredible strength,” Kerr added. “He wins every jump ball because he’s quicker to anticipate what’s happening, which means he’s getting to the rotation faster. He’s seeing what’s happening faster. He’s just a step ahead of the other nine guys.”

Based on his high basketball IQ and ability to read plays, Green would be an obvious candidate to be a future head coach. But his emotional and strong-spirited side says otherwise.

“I don’t know that he’ll coach. He definitely has the brain for it. I don’t know if he has the patience. He’s an incredibly passionate, emotional guy, and that passion and energy has frequently gotten him in trouble. And I love him. I think he’s a really good-hearted person with an incredible brain, but if he wants to coach he’s going to have to learn how to control some of that emotion, that desire, and that fire that burns within him, and it’s not an easy thing to do.”

Draymond Green is a four-time NBA Champion, four-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA team member, a nine-time All-Defensive team member, and the 2016-17 Defensive Player of the Year.

But it wasn’t always a positive experience with Green, Steve Kerr says, highlighting what goes into coaching and maintaining a relationship with one of the best and most emotional players in

“And in my first five years, we would get into three knockdown, dragouts a year. Part of it was, I just had to show the rest of the team that I’m in charge. You have to do things by a set of standards. It’s a community that you’re building, not just a team—a little society with values and standards and expectations. And then you’re a community that has to police itself. The coach has to demand certain behaviors, certain habits. So then for a long time we had a truce. I understood him so well. He understood me. But this year we had a major blowout in December. He’s such a unique person. There’s things he’s done that I can never forgive him for, and yet I will do anything for him.”

Steve Kerr just finished the final year of his head coaching contract with the Golden State Warriors. If he chooses to remain the head coach, which currently appears up in the air, then he’ll likely continue to coach both Draymond Green and Stephen Curry until the duo retires from basketball.

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