Chris Herring of FiveThirtyEight came out with an interesting piece on Wednesday, centered around his pet peeve of NBA players not getting back on defense because they are too busy complaining with the refs about calls on the other end.
Using SportVu tracking from the 2016-17 season, Herring calculated which NBA players have the highest rate of lagging behind on defense by at least three seconds for arguing with the referees, or other reasons. According to those metrics, Warriors forward Draymond Green had the highest “lag rate” of any player in the league this year, at 20 percent, coming in just ahead of Russell Westbrook, LeBron James and John Wall.
Here’s the top 10 via FiveThirtyEight:
Green being at the top is a bit ironic, considering he is likely to be voted as the Defensive Player of the Year, and is a large part of the reason why the Warriors are a top two defense for the third season in a row. It should be noted that not every instance of “lagging” can be attributed to arguments with referees. Herring points out specifically that Green often lags behind because he is “disappointed with himself after an overly fancy pass he’s made is intercepted.” However, Herring says the lion share of delays come from Green arguing a call for himself or his teammates, as the two examples below illustrate.
Green said at the beginning of the season that he was making a concerted effort not to argue with the referees this season, but the data would seem to show he gave up on that philosophy long ago. Luckily, Green’s lagging behind doesn’t have much affect on the Warriors’ defense, as they are able to hold off opponents more often then not as Green makes his way back, according to Herring.