The Warriors are a +47 in 64 minutes with Jordan Bell on the court this season. They are a team that is bound to make any player look better than they are, but this was a situation where the team complemented the skill set of the player perfectly and I'm still floored that there were 29 other GM's who allowed this to happen. I'm not sure the significance of this marriage has quite resonated with people around the league yet. Bell is obviously an expendable piece that the Warriors would (likely) win without, but his presence, to my mind, even as a rookie, all but ensures a repeat and solidifies their monopoly on the league for the better part of the next decade.
The Golden State organization continues to re-spawn supernatural basketball players and fit them to a system that has managed to virtually void the displacement of talent. Jordan Bell's intrinsic value as a player - his draft projection, his contract, his production - is disguising the reality of what, exactly, is going on here, which is to say the Warriors are hoarding skilled, evolutionary players at a rate that speaks to a specific market inefficiency that is not being acknowledged by the rest of the league. Acquiring Durant is one matter - it just so happens that he fits seamlessly with the rest of the roster and it just so happens that he bought into the idea of deconstructing his basketball legacy to fulfill some sort of lab requirement that festered in his mind, but the point is taken that that was an easy call. Draymond Green wasn't an easy call, though, and Draymond Green was the guy that set all of this in motion. He was the undersized second round pick that old-school coach Mark Jackson refused to play. Green was the source of the rift - or at least part of it - between Jackson and GM Bob Myers. He was the dude who unleashed all of this madness and tied the knot on Steve Kerr's symphony of passing, cutting, and screening that activated the greatest shooting back court of all-time and sealed the lid to a versatile and menacing defense that elevated a pedestrian six seed to heights never seen before.
It was Draymond Green, the 35th pick in the draft in 2012, who represents the foundation of the NBA's most tenuous discovery. Fast forward five years, and the experience of watching Jordan Bell fall to 38th in the draft (Golden State bought their way in!) resembled a Mike Myers movie. He's averaging 19 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals, and 2 blocks per 36 minutes. He's shooting 77% from the field. His offensive rating is 138 and his defensive rating is 103. His PER is 28.2 and his BPM is 10.0. He's guarding all five positions.
The sample is still extremely small and I'm certainly not saying he's the next Draymond. I'm just saying it's emblematic of why they're miles ahead of every organization in the league besides maybe San Antonio and Boston.
