Warriors’ Draymond Green wins 2024-25 NBA Hustle Award

Although Draymond Green didn’t win the Defensive Player of the Year award this season, he still ended up with some hardware.

A day after it was announced that the Golden State Warriors forward finished third in DPOY voting, he was named the 2024-25 NBA Hustle Award winner.

The recognition honours a player who made “effort plays” that do not often appear on the box score but help determine team success.

Green is the seventh different player to take home the award since the league started handing it out in 2017. He’s the fourth forward to do so.

He’s also just the second former Defensive Player of the Year winner (2017) to also be named a Hustle Award winner, joining 2022 DPOY Marcus Smart, who’s a three-time Hustle winner. And at age 35, he’s now the oldest player to take home the trophy.

While he did not lead a specific hustle stat, Green ranked in the top 15 in five categories and became the first winner in the award’s history to rank in the top 40 in all nine hustle categories used to determine the winner.

Green was second in total contested threes (231) while ranking in the top 10 for contested shots per game (9.1) and total charges drawn (14) this season.

He was also just one of two players, alongside MVP finalist Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City Thunder) to average at least 1.45 steals and 1.0 blocks per game through a minimum of 40 games.

Unlike other regular-season awards, the voting was not conducted by a global panel of 100 media members. Instead it was determined by the NBA. When announcing Green as the winner, the league revealed that he beat out finalists Cason Wallace (Thunder), Guerschon Yabusele (Philadelphia 76ers), Luguentz Dort (Thunder) and Dyson Daniels (Atlanta Hawks) for the award.