Windsor: MSU lesson help Draymond Green become an NBA leader

He admired his follow-through for an extra second, and if there were a better place to pose, it was hard to imagine. Michael Jordan once held his form after making a shot in Utah, too.

Here was Draymond Green last week burying a three from the top of the arc on the same court, the shot giving his Golden State Warriors a 12-point lead over the Jazz midway through the fourth. Green knew it was good when he let it go.

"It was such a good pass from Steph (Curry), I had to add theatrics," Green said.

So he held the pose, right hand extended, wrist parallel to the floor, fingers curled down, a textbook goose-neck. Green didn't shoot like this when he arrived at Michigan State seven years ago. In fact, he didn't control the court like he does now either.

His journey from doughy freshman to leader of the best team in the NBA is an unlikely one on the surface. Look a little closer and there are lessons for us all.

The rise and maturation of Green should remind us that team sports inspire clichés for a reason. Doing the little things matter. Being a winner is real. Understanding the game provides tangible advantages.

"I hate, I hate, I hate to say this, but the intangibles he brings to your team can't be measured," said Alvin Gentry, an assistant coach with the Warriors and the former headman for the Pistons. "I wish there was another way of saying that … The guy really is a coach's dream. You can't place a value on that. Use every cliché you can. His teams always win. The squad you put him on in a scrimmage, his team is going to win."

Why then, did Green fall to the second round three years ago when he came out of MSU as one of that program's best players? Because of the things that we can measure: Height. Vertical. Speed. Shooting percentage.

Green was considered too small for a power forward and too slow for a small forward. He didn't shoot jumpers off the dribble, or play above the rim with his leaping ability. He wasn't particularly quick against a stopwatch.

Yet here he is, a third-year pro, about to make a lot of money next season as teams compete for his services.

"Guys like him are hard to come by," said Gentry, who admired Green while coaching against him the last two seasons and still didn't fully appreciate what he did until he got to Golden State this summer. "He's better than what I thought."

Gentry said Green's name came up often in coaches' meetings last spring when the Clippers played the Warriors in the playoffs. He could guard nearly everyone on the floor, from Blake Griffin to Chris Paul, using his long arms and feel for how a play was about to unfold to compensate for his lack of size or athleticism.

He could knock down open threes. He could pass. And he could set screens about as well as anyone in the league.

"Day-day (Green's nickname) didn't set those kind of screens for us," said D.J. Stephens, MSU's assistant coach and primary big-man guru.

What he learned in East Lansing, though, made the screens he provides Curry and Klay Thompson possible. Stephens and Tom Izzo taught Green how to defend ball screens – the approach they use underlies MSU's defensive success the last 18 years.

Green took those principles – of angles and spacing, of when to show and when to hedge – and applied them on offense. He figured out that if the techniques he'd learned from Stephens and Izzo could blow up an offense, it could frustrate the defense, too if used from the other side.

This may seem simple, even intuitive on some level, but it's not. The best minds for games of space and movement have a gift for thinking conceptually. It's the difference between learning and memorizing a play, and designing a play from scratch.

"That he can transfer those lessons from one side of the ball to the other speaks to his IQ," said Stephens.

Green knew that if he could give Curry and Thompson – two of the best shooters in the world – even a fraction more time to launch a jumper, well that would make the Warriors even more difficult to deal with. He also knew that great screeners get great open looks themselves, either as a jump-shooter "popping" out after a screen, or as a "roller" heading towards the basket.

It's true that Green's offensive numbers are better this year because he's getting more minutes – he's a starter – and because of new coach Steve Kerr's emphasis on space and movement. Yet this undersells Green's ascension this season.

As he said, things began to click for him during his third year at MSU, too.

"I continue to get a better feel and learn the things I need to work on," he said.

Then he works on them.

His shot. His ratio of body fat. His leadership skills.

Green may be a natural leader, but he got to MSU overweight and without a work ethic.

Said Stephens: "Early in his freshman year he wasn't practicing real hard. So I had one of the managers go get a red practice jersey and bring it to (Green). I told him he was gonna wear it because we were going to redshirt him. I don't know if I ever saw him that angry."

When he learned how to work, and began to lose weight, he took over the locker room at MSU, just as he has at Golden State. In East Lansing, this wasn't unusual. He was the team's best player as a senior. But in Oakland, where he plays along side two of the bigger stars in the game, it's uncommon.

"Almost unheard of," said Gentry.

Many general managers are hesitant to gamble on immeasurable qualities like leadership. But as Gentry points out, if the 2012 draft were done over, Green would not fall to the second round.

Back then, the question was … who could he guard? Now the question is … who can't he?

Consider that on consecutive possessions Saturday night in Oklahoma City – a game the Warriors lost – Green forced Kevin Durant into a missed jumper and then did the same to Russell Westbrook. Still, as good as his defense is, what he's done for the chemistry of the team – in practice, on the road, in huddles during games – is more critical.

"I didn't expect the guys to really respond to me and allow me to lead the way I have," Green told me from his hotel room in Oklahoma City. "But the coaching staff and the front office put a great group of guys together. We love being around each other. And they allow me to be me."

Which gets us back to that goose-neck pose in Utah last week, when Green added a little spice to a dog-day winter night in January. After he buried the shot to force Utah's coach to call a timeout and held the pose, Green turned and jogged triumphantly toward the bench. He was met by a rush of teammates, jumping to shoulder-bump each one of them.

"Guys kept coming up to me wanting to jump," he said. "I wasn't gonna stop."

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.