Let’s say you were trying to script the absolute worst game Draymond Green could possibly have. Obviously, it would be a blowout loss for the Golden State Warriors. His stat line — always vulnerable given his limitations as a scorer — would be low across the board. Naturally, it would have to come in a game against a rival, which he fortunately has plenty of.
But what are the odds of all of those stars aligning at this point in his career? As it turns out, not low enough.
Golden State’s 144-93 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on Thursday checked every box on the Green disaster checklist. The Warriors have lost big during Green’s career before. In March, for instance, they lost by 52 points against the Boston Celtics. But Green’s individual performance, while not exactly good, at least managed to fall within the typical statistical ranges of a poor performance.
That wasn’t the case on Thursday when Green did not manage to score a single point. He didn’t dish out a single assist. And he didn’t pull down a single rebound. Across 19 minutes, the only positive statistic he managed to generate was a single steal. Within those minutes, the Warriors were outscored by 42 points.
Among players who posted no points, rebounds or assists, that minus-42 plus-minus is a new NBA record. In fact, no player in the play-by-play era had ever been a minus-42 in fewer than 20 minutes before Green did so on Thursday.
That makes sense with even a bit of thought. It’s rare that a player who posts zero posts, rebounds or assists ever even plays 20 minutes in an NBA game because any player good enough to play 20 minutes is usually going to find a way to post a statistic of some sort. Green, who also had four turnovers and four fouls in the loss, is the rare player whose stature guarantees a certain amount of playing time, but whose low-usage style and relatively small stature for a big man makes a zero-zero-zero stat line possible.
And to make matters even worse, that outing came against Memphis. While he has enemies across the league, no team has drawn more of Green’s ire than the Grizzlies. Even if Dillon Brooks is no longer on the team, they are just about the last team he’d want to get blown out by. And it was never close on Thursday as Memphis turned a 37-15 first quarter into a 51-point victory.
If it’s any consolation to Green, he was far from the only Warrior to have a bizarre night. For the first time in his career, Stephen Curry failed to make a field goal in a game that did not involve an injury. Dennis Schroder made his Warriors debut after a weekend trade with the Brooklyn Nets, and he shot 2-of-12 from the floor for just five points. Andrew Wiggins scored 19 points, but the other four Golden State starters combined for only nine.
Every team has a game or two like this at some point on the calendar. Blowouts are an inevitability of NBA life. But this was a special one for Green. Just about everything that possibly could have gone wrong for him on Thursday actually did.
