NBA Suspends Draymond Green for Five Games for "Unsportsmanlike and Dangerous" Conduct
The NBA suspended Draymond Green for five games "for escalating an on-court altercation and forcibly grabbing Minnesota
Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert around the neck in an unsportsmanlike
and dangerous manner." The incident happened during the opening moments of Minnesota's 104-101 win versus Golden State on Tuesday night. Green, Klay Thompson, and Minnesota's Jaden McDaniels were ejected from the game; the NBA subsequently fined Thompson, McDaniels, and Gobert $25,000 each for the incident that began with Thompson and McDaniels pulling each other's jerseys, continued with Gobert wrapping up Thompson, and then escalated out of control when Green put Gobert in a chokehold.
Don't hold your breath waiting for Green to apologize or express remorse; he has been unrepentant about his anger management issues and violent behavior throughout his career, encouraged by the NBA's reluctance to impose sufficient consequences to inspire him to seek help to improve his conduct.
After Green stomped on Sacramento's Domantas Sabonis while Sabonis was lying on the court during game two of the 2023 first round playoff series featuring Golden State versus Sacramento, I provided this commentary about Green:
After the game, an unrepentant Green took no responsibility for his actions and blamed Sabonis for everything. Green has a penchant for striking people when they are not looking or when they are lying on the ground. He fancies himself to be a tough guy, but I cannot recall ever seeing him square up face to face and challenge a player who is his size or bigger; he likes to pick on people who are smaller, or who are in compromised positions.
I do not condone fighting in basketball games, but it would be fascinating to teleport Green to earlier eras when fighting in NBA games was much more tolerated. I rather doubt that Green would square off against Charles Oakley, Maurice Lucas, or Willis Reed--and I think that Green would get a most unpleasant surprise if he believed that smaller guys like Alvin Robertson or Calvin Murphy would be easy targets for bullying. Green is a classic "hold me back" guy who runs his mouth, takes cheap shots, and knows that he is not going to have to fight a grown man on even terms.
Green appears to have serious emotional issues that negatively impact his behavior, and hurt his team's chances to win. I have no patience for anyone who suggests that the Warriors would have won the 2016 NBA Finals if Green had not been suspended for game five, and I have no patience for anyone who suggests that the Warriors would have beaten the Kings last night if Green had not been ejected. Being suspended and ejected is an essential part of who Green is. If you posit that Green's defense, rebounding, and passing help the Warriors to win, then you also have to accept that Green's emotional volatility damages the Warriors and hurts their winning chances. The good, the bad, and the ugly are all part of the Draymond Green experience.
The NBA suspended Green one game for the Sabonis stomp, and that punishment clearly was not enough to curb Green's ongoing anger management issues. When David Stern served as the NBA's Commissioner, he made it clear that persistent improper conduct--whether that conduct consisted of illegal drug use, dirty plays, or anything else--would result in a one way ticket out of the league. Adam Silver seems to want to be a "kinder, gentler" Commissioner, but that results in the escalation of improper conduct because perpetrators feel immune from justice. After Green punched out his then-teammate Jordan Poole prior to last season, I noted that he "has anger control/emotional control issues that have yet to be addressed because his conduct is not regulated by the league or by his team." During the 2022 NBA Finals, I expressed disappointment with the extent that the NBA tolerates (and thus encourages) Green's misconduct:
It is not surprising that the Warriors responded to their game one loss by being more energetic and physical in game two, but it is surprising that Draymond Green is permitted to repeatedly throw opposing players to the ground, hit opposing players with forearms and/or elbows aimed above the neck, and instigate confrontations while only being punished with one technical foul. As ABC's Jeff Van Gundy has repeatedly noted, there is a bizarre double standard that works in Green's favor: Green is expected to behave poorly, so he is therefore given a benefit of the doubt that is not given to players who are more mild-mannered. Had another player fouled a three point shooter, landed on top of the shooter, rested his legs on the opposing player, and then grabbed the opposing player's shorts after the opposing player pushed his legs aside--as Green did to Jaylen Brown late in the second quarter--that player would have received a technical foul; unfortunately, because Green was the offender here and he had already received a technical foul, the referees assessed no penalty. Basically, after Green received his first technical foul he had a license to commit any mayhem short of a flagrant foul without being penalized. In the good old days, the game was more physical than this and yet also more sensibly officiated: players had a lot contact when the ball was live, but dead ball contact was not tolerated, and the issuance of a first technical foul was not a license to commit future mayhem but a warning that you are one false step away from being ejected.
It is worth adding that even though Green is highly compensated and benefits from double standards that favor him, he has complained that there are double standards that discriminate against athletes, a contention that Marcellus Wiley brilliantly refuted:
"What's happening is Draymond is confusing what a lot of people are confusing: double standard with different worlds...Double standard implies that you're in the same world...I understand why people get confused, but the truth is we're in two different realities. Ask Michael Jordan, who is an owner. We [pro athletes] are employees, brother. I know we are glorified employees...[80,000] people showed up to just watch me work and not 80,000 people showed up at everybody's job/employment. But what happens from that perspective is you start to get a God complex. You start to lose your way. You start to realize that maybe I am not the same as other employees. Draymond Green and others need some real world friends to understand perspective. Because, when you are an employee there are two names on your check: yours, and whoever is paying you. You guys don't live in the same reality. It's just that simple. So, if you don't like bosses, be a boss--simple as that. Oh, you can't be a boss. Well, then, being a boss comes with its perks, comes with its privileges." Wiley then points out that salaries in the major sports leagues--the NBA, the NFL, MLB--have soared in the past decade, far outpacing inflation. He correctly notes that this is a major way that owners show respect to employees. He asks players like Green who claim to be disrespected, "What are your measurements? What are your metrics? This metric right here is undeniable. They are showing you respect."
Green is the poster child for athletes who are paid far more than they could ever earn doing anything else, and who have developed a sense of entitlement without a corresponding sense of responsibility regarding their conduct. If Green did not have the NBA to protect him, there is a strong possibility that he would be in jail--or dead--as a consequence of his inability to control his anger. Sadly, neither of those possibilities can be ruled out if he does not seek help. Gobert referred to Green as a "clown" and I can understand why he feels that way, but this is no laughing matter: Green needs help both to protect others and to protect himself, because his behavior goes well beyond just being a physical player. In the sense that Green is overrated, Gobert is correct: without the injured Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson around to carry the load, the Warriors went 15-50 in 2019-20 as Green averaged 8.0 ppg on .389 field goal shooting while looking very much like a role player and very little like the Hall of Famer he is purported to be. Green seems to get very angry when his limitations as a player are pointed out, but that does not change the reality that he is a limited player whose specific talents can be helpful for a team already stacked with talent but don't make much impact on winning otherwise.
Labels: Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors, Minnesota Timberwolves, Rudy Gobert
posted by David Friedman @ 8:20 PM
6 Comments:
There are few things in life more loathsome than a loudmouthed fake tough guy who cannot confront his own insecurities so instead he just constantly antagonizes others. I don’t know what has to happen for Draymond Green to be held truly accountable for his lunacy but it appears that he might literally have to kill another player for the league to understand just how physically dangerous and absurdly volatile his behavior is. I hope it doesn’t come to anything close to that but you never know with the Draymond Green Show. A case could be made that Jordan Poole is fortunate to not have permanent brain damage and even fortunate to still be alive after the furious sucker punch that Green took at his head.
Michael:
I agree with everything you said, and it is worth emphasizing that it is very fortunate that Green did not seriously injure Poole. There have been many examples of an ordinary-sized person hitting another person in the head and killing that person, so someone as big as Green is definitely capable of maiming or killing another person. Green is the same size as Kermit Washington, who almost killed Rudy Tomajanovich with an in-game punch. What if Green or Gobert had slipped when Green had Gobert in a chokehold? Gobert could have suffered a broken neck. Some people may scoff, but Green has repeatedly acted in reckless ways that put other people's health at risk.
David,
As a lawyer, you're no doubt familiar with the "frolic and detour" term of art that deals with the issue of whether or not an employee is behaving within the "scope of duty". A "detour" is a minor departure from an employee's duties, but it's still within the scope of employment. Whereas a "frolic" is a major departure, it's self-aggrandizing behavior that goes beyond the scope of employment. It's tortious, or maybe even criminal, behavior that has nothing to do with the job, but everything to do with the employee.
We understand that NBA players will get into scuffles here and there. This is what uber-competitive athletes with more testosterone than average do. We can even let Michael Jordan's punch of Steve Kerr slide. For by all accounts it was not a pattern of behavior in MJ. Moreover, MJ did apologize to Kerr right after it happened. By all accounts, he was genuinely contrite. Anyway, we can frame the occasional scuffle or fisticuff as a "detour".
But Draymond Green's behavior is something else. As you note, David, it's a pattern of behavior. Suckerpunching a (much smaller) man and knocking him down, if not out, in the middle of practice surely constitutes a "frolic".
Players grabbing each others' jerseys and what not, what happened at the beginning of the Timberwolves/Warriors game the other night, seems more like a "detour".
But surely Draymond Green went on a "frolic" when he put Rudy Gobert in the sleeperhold.
To your point about how Adam Silver and the Warriors organization have enabled Green's tortious and perhaps criminal behavior, we should also consider the doctrine of "respondeat superior". Silver and Joe Lacob, lead owner of the Warriors, are surely culpable. For they are Green's employers who are enabling tortious, maybe criminal, behavior.
As you said, this has gotta stop. Somebody might get permanently maimed or KILLED out there!
Anonymous:
Writing for a general audience here, I tend to avoid legal terms of art unless they are brought up by someone else first or essential for the conversation, but you provided a good description of how to analyze "frolic and detour" regarding an employee's "scope of duty." You are correct that an NBA player's "scope of duty" may involve grabbing another player's jersey--or even throwing an elbow to the midsection while battling for position--while it would be unacceptable for a regular office worker to go up to a fellow employee and grab that employee by the shirt collar. I should note for sharp-eyed legal scholars who may be reading this that it is not a perfect analogy--no analogy is perfect--but it serves the purpose of emphasizing the larger point that it is reasonable for NBA players to expect to get away with some conduct that they could not do in a regular day job but Green has repeatedly gone way over the line of what is acceptable even for a pro athlete in a contact sport.
It is an interesting legal question to consider whether or not Silver or Lacob could be successfully sued by a player seriously injured by Green making a "non-basketball play." As attorneys often say, "It depends." I vaguely recall that a hockey player filed a lawsuit of that nature decades ago but he lost because the defendants successfully argued that he had "assumed the risk" by playing hockey. Of course, this is a fact-based inquiry: playing pro sports involves the inherent assumption of a different set of risks than working in an office, but if Green breaks someone's orbital bone with a punch or breaks someone's neck with a chokehold the victim could argue that being punched in the face or choked out is not the sort of risk that one reasonably assumes by playing pro basketball. I would certainly argue that an inadvertent elbow to the face while battling for rebounding position is a risk that an NBA player assumes, but a punch to the face is not a risk that an NBA player assumes.
I realize that some people may consider this discussion an overreaction and argue that the game used to be more violent, but I would provide two counters: (1) Just because the game may have been more violent in the past does not make that right, and (2) there is a difference between physical play, fighting when two equally sized opponents square up to fight each other, and sucker punches/chokeholds/stomping someone who is lying on the ground. Physical play is good, fighting is not good but may occasionally be necessary, and sucker punches/chokeholds/stomps are unacceptable.
I would even argue that Green's behaviour is much more dangerous than Ja Morant antics. The latter is posing and display, while Green may disable someone if not outright kill.
And the league treats both much differently. If Morant antics deserve 25 game suspension, then Green should be banned for a season.
Beep:
Morant has not only been "posing" but he has also--allegedly--been involved in physical altercations, and I can understand why the NBA is extremely concerned about an NBA player who has allegedly been involved in physical altercations who has also repeatedly waved a gun around.
That being said, I think that Green's chokehold on Gobert on top of Green's previous list of transgressions warranted much more than a five game suspension. If he had been suspended much longer for punching Poole, maybe he would have thought twice about choking Gobert.
I hate to think what Green might do next after receiving minimal punishments for a punch to the face and a chokehold (plus his other transgressions that also led to minimal punishments).
Post a Comment
<< Home