Before the $82 million contract, before the mansion atop the Berkeley Hills, before the two All-Star Games, Draymond Green was a pudgy 7-year-old trying to play with the older kids at Civitan Recreation Center in Saginaw, Mich.

When those middle-schoolers told him to get lost, Green screamed and flung billiard balls at them. Sometimes, after he returned home with a busted lip, his mother, Mary Babers-Green, stomped across the street to the rec center and berated the bullies into letting her son join their pickup game.

“When he would finally get out there,” Babers-Green recalled, “he would stay on the court.”

The same doggedness that allowed the Warriors’ forward to compete with bigger children has helped Green hush anyone who questioned his ability to lock down his man. Today, Green is the emotional anchor of the NBA’s second-best defense. The player nicknamed “Dancing Bear” at Michigan State uses his 7-foot-1 wingspan to defend everyone from James Harden to LeBron James to DeMarcus Cousins.

In the past two years, Green has achieved two of the three goals he eyed when he entered the league: win an NBA title and play in the Olympics. Now, after two narrow misses, he is seen as the front-runner to claim that elusive third goal: the Defensive Player of the Year Award.

“I pride myself on that side of the basketball,” Green said. “To win that award and be known as the best defender in this league, it’d mean so much.”

In 2012, when the 6-foot-7, 230-pounder was coming out of college, league executives reckoned that he was too slow to stop NBA small forwards and too small to guard big men. During pre-draft meetings, coaches and general managers asked him what he thought of the term “tweener.”

“I’ll check anybody,” Green told them. “Whatever I need to do, I’ll figure it out.”

It is a mind-set forged during those early years at the rec center. After the bigger kids stuck him in trash cans and banished him to the playroom, Green fought his way back to the court. In pickup games, he played against boys almost twice his age, scrapped for loose balls and made plenty of steals. Gang members left their street corners to bet on the chubby third-grader with unrivaled bravado.

Like many players coming of age in the early 2000s, Green wanted to score like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. It was Green’s uncle, Bennie Babers, his coach at Longstreet Elementary School in Saginaw, who introduced him to the importance of defense. As a 9-year-old, Green was reviewing the nuances of help-side defense.

Back to Gallery Warriors’ Draymond Green vies for Defensive Player of Year 7 1 of 7 Photo: Karen Warren, Chronicle 2 of 7 Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle 3 of 7 Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle 4 of 7 Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle 5 of 7 Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle 6 of 7 Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle 7 of 7 Photo: Tim Hussin, Special to The Chronicle













In 2008, when he arrived at Michigan State as a well-regarded scorer from Saginaw High, Green immediately impressed head coach Tom Izzo with his grasp of spacing and angles. Though he averaged only 11.3 minutes per game as a freshman, Green often was on the court late in games for his defense.

It was during his junior season, his first as a full-time starter, that Green began to showcase his versatility. When Green demanded during a timeout huddle to check a guard who was getting hot, Izzo was bewildered. “Wait, you know he’s a guard, right?” he asked Green, whose pear-shaped physique made him an easy target for opposing student sections.

A couple of weeks later at top-ranked Duke, Green nagged Kyle Singler — an All-America small forward who thrived along the perimeter — into an off shooting night. A high basketball IQ helped Green overcome so-so athleticism. He memorized opponents’ tendencies, nabbing steals when players relied too heavily on their dominant hand. In practices, when teammates were slow to pick up defensive concepts, Green chewed his nails.

He still was far from a stopper. A solid weak-side defender by most standards, Green tended to over-help. Poor conditioning left him doubled over, grabbing his shorts, after a handful of trips up and down the court. After Green earned Big Ten All-Defensive-Team honors as a senior, Michigan State assistant coach Dwayne Stephens pulled him aside during a workout.

“This is bull—,” Stephens told Green. “You know you’re not that good of a defender.”

During his pre-draft workout with the Warriors, Green switched off a screen and onto a 6-1 point guard from Villanova named Maalik Wayns. Golden State assistant coach Darren Erman jotted down a note: “Can guard the pick-and-roll.” As more and more teams moved toward a style of “position-less” basketball, Green’s ability to deal with everyone from guards to big men made him an asset.

The Warriors, who took the 2011-12 Big Ten Player of the Year 35th overall after North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes (No. 7 overall) and Vanderbilt’s Festus Ezeli (No. 30), knew Green was fiery and skilled. They didn’t recognize he also was a basketball savant.

While reviewing video after a summer-league practice in Green’s rookie year, Erman — the defensive architect under then-head coach Mark Jackson — asked Green to detail what he saw on the floor. Green had yet to play an NBA game, and he already could anticipate plays before they unfolded.

“His understanding of help defense, his tags, his team responsibilities — it was all off the charts,” Erman said. “I mean, as good as anyone probably ever coming into the league.”

Green realized that, as a second-round pick, playing time was not guaranteed. One day during Green’s first summer in Oakland, Erman encouraged him to trim fat. Less than 24 hours later, he saw Green hauling an exercise bike into the team sauna.

Noticeably lighter by the start of the regular season, he finally had the stamina to match his will. In one game, Minnesota’s Kevin Love drove past Green for consecutive layups and pressed his luck a third time. Green read the play, rose and blocked the 6-10 forward’s shot. As the ball rocketed out of bounds, Green pounded his chest and howled.

“He always had that toughness,” Izzo said. “If you’ve got brains and toughness as a defender, that combination can make up for maybe not having a crazy vertical.”

Green arrived in the league just as teams were shifting to smaller, more versatile lineups. In Jackson’s switch-heavy scheme, Green needed to be able to guard all five positions. Green, who backed up the more offense-oriented David Lee his first two seasons, was again on the floor at the end of games because of his ability as a stopper.

After replacing Jackson, it wasn’t long before Steve Kerr replaced Lee in the starting lineup with Green, whose skills as a defender, rebounder and facilitator were integral to Kerr’s system. On a unit featuring mild-mannered All-Stars Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, Green settled in as the brash, emotional leader.

“He gives us an edge that we otherwise wouldn’t have, and it’s all tied into this incredible package,” Kerr said. “Honestly, it’s amazing nobody saw this coming.”

In quiet moments before Warriors games, Green thumbs through texts from his mother: “Look at your body of work. Are you still on track? Have you done enough?”

The messages, which have surfaced in Draymond’s inbox since his freshman year at Michigan State, are Babers-Green’s way of unlocking the furor on which her youngest son subsists. And these days, they also help keep him on target for the only individual award about which he cares.

Green finished second to San Antonio’s Kawhi Leonard in Defensive Player of the Year Award voting each of the past two seasons. Kerr announced Tuesday that Green will sit out Wednesday’s regular-season finale against the Lakers, but he has long since built his best case yet to edge Leonard and Utah’s Rudy Gobert for the award.

Green has made five defensive plays in the last minute of one-possession games that have helped seal victories. Two months after he posted the first triple-double in NBA history without double-digit points, Green leads the league in steals and is second in deflections. He is the first player since Dwyane Wade in 2008-09 to record at least 150 steals and 100 blocks in a season. When Green is on the floor, Golden State has allowed six fewer points per 100 possessions than when he sits.

When Kevin Durant, Golden State’s best interior defender, was sidelined five-plus weeks with a left knee injury, Green was the driving force behind the team’s most inspired defensive stretch of the season. The Warriors, who lost Andrew Bogut and Ezeli — defensive-minded big men — last summer, enter Wednesday’s game trailing only San Antonio in defensive efficiency.

Two decades after fighting with the middle-schoolers at the rec center to get onto the floor, Green has silenced anyone who doubted whether he was an elite defender. The question now is whether the voters will deem him the NBA’s best.

“For Dray, it comes down to this: ‘What does he need to do to stay on the court?’” Babers-Green said. “If there’s one thing I know about him, it’s that he always finds a way.”

Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cletourneau@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Con_Chron

Wednesday’s game

Who: Lakers (26-55) at

Warriors (66-15)

When: 7:30 p.m.

Where: Oracle Arena

TV/Radio: NBCSB+/95.7