The Warriors sign JaMychal Green: a review of his previous season(s)
Trying to make sense of JaMychal Green's shooting decline, Nikola Jokic's adoration for Green, his lineup numbers at the 4 vs. the 5, and the bad lineup data for Denver's bench units this past season
JaMychal Green caught my eye in the 2019 playoffs during the Warriors’ first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers. The Warriors allowed themselves to be taken to six games by an eighth-seeded Clippers team that exuded toughness and swagger and Green was a big part of his team’s attitude. Green averaged 11 points and 5.3 rebounds a game on 53/52/80 shooting splits in that series, which was probably the high point of his career. The next season, Green played 63 games for the Clippers and gave them 17 minutes a game off the bench in the playoffs. The Clippers looked to be heading to the Western Conference Finals until they blew a 3-1 lead to the Denver Nuggets and that summer, Green pulled a Kevin Durant and joined the enemy.
Green, whose NBA career bloomed with the late-era Grit N’ Grind Grizzlies, appreciated the heart of the Nuggets team. Per Bleacher Report:
"Some teams may look at them not being dogs, not being tough. Once they get on the floor, they'll change your mind about that. They'll shut your mouth," Green said, per Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN. "That's what they pretty much did in the bubble when I was with the Clippers."
Even though Green’s shooting declined this past season, he still provided value to the Nuggets with his toughness and intensity. From March of 2022:
JaMychal Green, a number of sources mentioned, sparked that victory with an impassioned, profanity-laced rant that emboldened his teammates and fueled their comeback win. Typically one of many quieter veterans on the Nuggets, Green laid into his teammates final Monday night time telling them the truths he felt they wanted to listen to. In retrospect, his instinct was appropriate.
When Rivers was requested two nights later in regards to the impression each Green and DeMarcus Cousins have dropped at the Nuggets, Rivers deemed the pair the “Bash Brothers,” a reference to the enduring enforcers from The Mighty Ducks.
“They scare people sometimes,” Rivers mentioned with amusing. “They intimidate people out there.”
Green’s toughness was widely appreciated in Denver and in his first season with the Nuggets, two-time MVP, Nikola Jokic sang his praises:
Like Nemanja Bjelica before him, I’d expect Green plays the majority of his minutes at the center during his Warriors’ stint. The NBA is downsizing and while more of Green’s minutes have come at the power forward in the past three seasons (there’s also a whole bunch of wonkiness in the positional designation; for example, Jeff Green is listed at the center in a whole lot of Green/Green lineups from this past season), the Warriors have an obvious need for a third big man after Kevon Looney and James Wiseman. At his best, Green should be able to offer some of the switchability that Kevon Looney does. These play from 2020, looks like they are straight out of the Warriors’ switch-heavy scheme:
For good measure, here’s some film from the aforementioned game where Green sparked the Nuggets against the 76ers:
That version of Green could provide much-needed spacing in the frontcourt along Jonathan Kuminga and solidify the defense in bench units. A second unit including both Donte DiVincenzo and Green would have at least two proven defenders who have played playoff minutes. Hopefully, the presence of Green will give the Warriors defensive know-how, toughness in the frontcourt, and some spacing at the 4/5.
JaMcyhal Green’s 2021-2022 statistical profile (career bests bolded):
67 games played, 16.2 minutes a game, 6.4 points a game, 4.2 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 0.9 turnovers, 0.6 steals, 0.4 blocks, and 2.4 fouls.
48.6% FG, 26.6% 3P, 87.1% FT, 58.7 TS% (+1.5% league average TS), 53.7% EFG (+0.5% league average EFG).
8.0 FGA, 5.2 3PA, 2.0 FTA.
BBREF: 114 ORTG, 109 DRTG, -7.0 +/ on/off- per 100 poss., 0.0 VORP, 1.18 WS/48, 17.2% USG.
NBA.com: 106.8 ORTG, 110.3 DRTG, -3.5 net rating, 16.8% USG.
-9.3 DIFF in non-garbage time (11th percentile), 48th percentile usage, 51s percentile points per shot (PSA), 52nd percentile AST%, 48th percentile AST:Usg, 39th percentile TOV% bigs.
-0.01. ORPM, -1.85 DRPM, -1.86 RPM (#232 rank of 557 players).
Per Basketball Reference’s BPM, Green’s -1.8 was only 0.3 points worse than his career cumulative career -0.5 BPM. By that metric, Green has not had a positive impact on any team that he’s played on, and Cleaning the Glass feels similarly about him, ranking his age-25-season with the Memphis Grizzlies as the only time a team played better with him on the floor than off it. But if we go strictly by how Green’s teams played with him on the court and not the net rating differential, things look better. From the 2018-19 to 2020-21 season, his teams had +0.5, +5.1, and +3.1 net ratings when Green played and were above average on offense.
This past season, Green’s on-court net rating was a -4.7, and the Nuggets only managed a 108.8 ORTG. Did you see in the statistical profile how bad Green’s three-point shooting was this past season? His sub-30 percent shooting from deep was something of an outlier and in the three previous seasons, Green had shot 40.3%, 38.7%, and 39.9% from three on 5.8 attempts per 36 minutes. During this past season, Green’s attempts from deep declined — perhaps in reaction to his bad percentages — and he shot only 4.1 threes per 36 minutes.
In spite of his poor three-point shooting, Green still had an above league-average TS% and EFG and in fact, his TS% numbers have been better than average in the past four seasons of his career. Green has also been a rugged rebounder for most of his career and his 14.5% TRB this past season ranked in the top 30 of all NBA players.
JaMychal Green’s shot profile:
Restricted area: 66.9% on 65 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 45.2% on 31 attempts.
Mid-range: 52.4% on 21 attempts.
Left corner 3: 40% on 15 attempts.
Right corner 3: 30.4% on 203 attempts.
Above the break 3: 23.8% on 84 attempts.
Floaters: 80% on 5 attempts.
Layups and fingers rolls: 47.9% on 96 attempts.
FGA% per total drives: 35.3%.
Assisted by: Facundo Campazzo and Bones Hyland (27), Will Barton (16), Nikola Jokic (12), DeMarcus Cousins (9), P.J. Dozier (6), Monte Morris (5), Aaron Gordon and Bryn Forbes (4), Austin Rivers (3), Jeff Green and Vlatko Cancar and Zeke Nnanji (2), Michael Porter Jr. (1).
FGM% assisted: 75.5%
FGM% unassisted: 24.5%
This past season, JaMychal Green took just 37.9% of his shots from deep compared to 67.6% and 52.9% in the previous seasons. Green took more shots from 0-3 feet — a 39.1% frequency of all of his shots — this season than he had since his 2017-18 seasons when he started 54 games for a tanking Grizzlies team.
For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, Green’s catch-and-shoot percentage on threes dropped to 27.3% after shooting making those at a 41.7% and 38.8% rate the two seasons prior. Green was, at least, closer to average on open threes this past season (33.9%) than he was on wide-open shots — inexplicably, Green shot 18.5% on wide-open threes, his worst percentage since he shot 31.4% on wide-open threes in the 2017-18 season.
Green did shoot the best percentage he has on midrange jumpers since his 2016-17 season when he shot 51.1% on nearly 100 midrange attempts. But his efficiency on mid-range jumpers this past season seems like an outlier buoyed by a small sample size. In the seasons since his hyper-efficient 2016-17 season, Green shot 37%, 39.7%, 41.7% and 25%, from the mid-range on an almost linear decline of attempts.
Some other offensive stats of note for Green:
Per NBA.com’s play type stats, Green scored 1.08 points-per-possession on 0.5 post-ups a game, which ranked in the 82nd percentile. In the previous season, Green’s post-ups only yielded 0.66 PPP. That number is far more in line with what Green did in 2019-20 with the Clippers (0.70 PPP), but he did score 1.11 PPP on post-ups in 23 games with the Clippers in the 2018-19 season after getting traded their mid-season. In his 41 games with the Grizzlies in the 18-19 season, Green posted up 1.4 times a game and scored 0.79 PPP in the post.
From the 2018-19 season through the 2021-22 season, Green has ranked in the 19th, 39th, 80th, and 20th percentile PPP as a roll man in pick-and-rolls. On a Warriors team that mostly shuns regular-season pick-and-rolls with traditional bigs, Green’s uneven numbers as the roll man shouldn’t matter too much.
Green had the highest frequency of cutting possessions of any Nuggets player this past season (18.4%) but only managed a 31st percentile PPP on that play type. In Green’s first season with the Nuggets, he only cut and received the ball on 11.5% of his possessions, but his PPP was in the 57th percentile. In Green’s Clippers’ stint, he ranked 4th and 5th percentile as a cutter.
Here are shot charts from Positive Residual of JaMychal Green’s previous three seasons below:
2021-22:
2020-21:
2019-20:
The lineup stats:
There are only 7 positive lineups in this list, all but two of them with Green alongside another center. Cleaning the Glass actually lists Jeff Green as the center in lineups where he and JaMychal share the frontcourt and there are only two lineups in this list that come out positive with JaMychal at the 5. You’ll note also that Monte Morris, the Nuggets’ former starting point guard, is only listed three times in these lineup combos.
I went into Cleaning the Glass’ position data for Green to see how often he played at the 5 for the Nuggets and how they did in his minutes. In his two seasons with the Nuggets, Denver has defended better with Green at the 5 than the 4. In the 2021-22 season, Green at the 5 lineups had an 82nd percentile 108.4 DRTG and in the previous season, an 89th percentile 107.4 DRTG.
But in this past season, lineups with Green at the 5 only tallied a 101 ORTG compared to a 118.4 ORTG the previous season. It’s worth noting that the Nuggets were without Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. this past season — MPJ figured prominently in the lineups that Green played heavy minutes in during the 2020-21 season — and their bench rotation was quite thin this season. When Green played at the 5 in the 2020-21 season, Porter Jr. shared the court with him over 60% of the time and the Nuggets had a +26.8 net rating with a 124.4 ORTG and 97.6 DRTG. The first person I think of who can replicate some of Porter Jr.’s offensive role is Klay Thompson and I’d hope that Green spends a lot of his minutes paired with at least two of Steph Curry, Jordan Poole, Moses Moody, and Klay Thompson.
I’ve also included lineup data from Green’s lineups in the Warriors’ series against the Nuggets. Positive lineups are highlighted in green:
Feels like JMG is a steal on a minimum. 🤞🏻He plays well for the dubs.