NBA Wags a Stern Finger at Draymond Green for Confronting a Fan During a Game
The NBA has reportedly issued a "warning" to Draymond Green after Green went chest to chest with a courtside fan in New Orleans on Sunday as Green's Golden State Warriors defeated the New Orleans Pelicans, 124-106. The fan had been chanting "Angel Reese" at Green after Green missed several shots. Reese is a WNBA player who is notorious for seemingly padding her rebound totals by collecting her own missed shots. Green finished with eight points on 3-13 field goal shooting, 10 rebounds (including four offensive rebounds), six assists, and five turnovers; in the first quarter, Green scored 0 points on 0-7 field goal shooting, and he had four offensive rebounds (all of which were from his own missed layups or attempted tip in shots). The fan's chanting may have been annoying to Green, but it was not vulgar, and it pertained to the action on the court, as opposed to being a random or offensive insult. Fans have a right to cheer or boo, and to heckle as long as the heckling is not vulgar/offensive and not interfering with other fans being able to watch the game.
It is not clear what Green thought that he could accomplish by approaching the fan, who did not back away and did not seem intimidated by Green; it is also not clear what the NBA thinks that it can accomplish by issuing an unofficial warning to Green, who has a long history of violent misconduct despite being fined and suspended multiple times; if forcing Green to miss games and lose money did not straighten him out, a verbal warning is unlikely to have much impact.
Green has quite a rap sheet demonstrating his immaturity and his lack of emotional control. In the 2016 playoffs, Green kicked Steven Adams in the groin, and Green was suspended for game five of the NBA Finals after striking LeBron James in the groin in game four. Green consistently gets away with running roughshod over referees with incessant (and often vulgar) complaining/whining, he viciously punched then-teammate Jordan Poole in 2022, he stomped on Domantas Sabonis twice while Sabonis was down on the floor during a 2023 playoff game, he choked Rudy Gobert during a 2023 regular season game, and he slugged Jusuf Nurkic in the face during a 2023 regular season game.
Green specializes in attacking players who are (1) not standing up or are in an otherwise compromised position and (2) are either smaller than he is or are clearly not going to fight back. Green had a chance to confront Ron Artest/Metta World Peace several years ago and somehow managed to not attempt a chokehold, groin kick, or punch--because Green is a bully who knows better than to pick a fight with someone who is crazier or tougher than he is. There may not be that many players left in the NBA who are willing to fight at the cost of being fined/suspended, but Green knows very well who they are and he gives them a wide berth. However, people like Green who think that they know who to mess with only have to make one mistake to end up in a precarious situation in which either they get injured or they injure someone else--and Green is fortunate that the players he has struck, kicked, and choked did not end up with serious injuries. What if Poole had suffered brain damage or Gobert had suffered a broken neck? There are many people in prison because the people who they hit in the face or who they choked suffered serious or even fatal injuries.
Green also has an outsized belief not only regarding his worth/power, but the worth/power of athletes in general vis a vis the owners who employ them (and the fans who ultimately pay their salaries by purchasing tickets and merchandise). After the NBA suspended Green for choking Gobert, I lamented Green's anger control issues and inflated sense of entitlement:
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.
In December 2023, I warned that the NBA is taking a risk by not sufficiently disciplining Green for his out of control violent behavior:
If the NBA keeps protecting Green from the natural consequences of his actions, Green is going to eventually do something so egregious that the NBA will no longer be able to protect him because the judicial system will be compelled to intervene. Draymond Green is a 6-6, 230 walking time bomb that is going to explode in the league's face if Commissioner Silver does not take strong action--and if time bomb Green explodes, the league is not going to be able to successfully argue in court that the explosion was not foreseeable given Green's track record of violent behavior.
Green has some basketball skills, but he is not as good as he thinks he is. Green should not be compared to Hall of Famers Dennis Rodman or Ben Wallace. Rodman won seven straight rebounding titles, and would have been a dominant rebounder regardless of who his teammates were. Wallace won two rebounding titles and one shot blocking title, and he ranked in the top 10 in the league in those categories seven times each overall. Neither Rodman nor Wallace could have been the best player on a championship team, but both were statistically dominant players. In contrast, Green has only led the NBA in a statistical category once (steals per game in 2016-17), he has never ranked in the top ten in rebounds per game or blocked shots per game, and he is heavily dependent on being surrounded by great players who do most of the work, as I noted last year when I assessed Green's legacy:
Green is going to ride his triple single career averages (8.7 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 5.6 apg) all the way to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame because he was lucky enough to play alongside Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Andre Iguodala. Is "lucky" a fair adjective? What would Green's career have looked like without those guys? Glad you asked: in the 2019-20 season, Iguodala and Durant were gone (Green played a role in chasing Durant away, but that is another story), Thompson missed the whole season due to injury, and Curry played in just five games due to injury. Green showed the world who he really is as a player, averaging 8.0 ppg on .389 field goal shooting along with 6.2 rpg and 6.2 apg for a 15-50 team. So, yes, "lucky" seems about right.
Green will be 36 years old soon, and his pedestrian numbers so far this season (7.9 ppg on .391 field goal shooting, 5.8 rpg) indicate that his playing days will be over soon. Green's retirement will be a mixed blessing: the good news is that we will no longer have to watch him deliver cheap shots to opposing players and we will no longer have to listen to his self-serving excuses for his lack of emotional self-control; the bad news is that he likely will be paid millions of dollars per year to be a commentator for one of the NBA's media partners, turning that media partner's pregame show into a mess almost as unwatchable as any pregame show featuring "Screamin' A" Smith. Green is supposed to have a high basketball IQ, but that has not been evident thus far when he has been a TV commentator; to cite just one example, when he participated in TNT's coverage of the 2024 Western Conference Finals he was more interested in bashing Gobert than in providing intelligent analysis, as I pointed out in my game two recap:
An intelligent, unbiased commentator would talk about the final possession of the game when Dallas gave up an open three pointer to Naz Reid even though Reid was the hottest three point shooter in the game. Reid's shot barely missed, but just as it could be argued that Minnesota should not have given up a three pointer to Doncic with a two point lead it could also be argued that Dallas should not have given up an open shot to Reid, one of the few Minnesota players who shot well in this game.
Instead, Green focused his attention on Gobert, sounding like a little kid on the playground teasing another kid as opposed to sounding like an intelligent, unbiased commentator analyzing what happened. It is valid to question why Minnesota left Gobert in the game for the last defensive possession instead of going small, switching everything, and forcing Dallas to shoot a two point shot--but it is silly to act as if Gobert is personally responsible for Doncic hitting the kind of shot that he has hit many times before against many other players.
Gobert has one of the best plus/minus numbers overall during the 2024 playoffs, and the Timberwolves have outscored the Mavericks during his minutes this series while being outscored when Gobert is out of the game. I would not be surprised if "Screamin' A" Smith acted as if an entire 48 minute NBA game can be boiled down to one shot, but intelligent commentators understand that the last play is not necessarily what decided the outcome. Here, the Timberwolves enjoyed a 16 point third quarter lead before their offense fell apart; are we supposed to pretend like all of those empty offensive possessions had nothing to do with the final result?
Green is either an idiot or a buffoon: he either does not know what he is talking about, or he does not care how foolish he sounds. It is interesting that Kenny Smith was the only person on the TNT set who was willing to even tentatively challenge Green's nonsense both before and after the game. Smith noted that the Timberwolves have outscored the Mavericks during Gobert's minutes, and Smith emphasized that Doncic could have made that last shot over anyone, not just Gobert. Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal did not contradict Green, but they correctly focused on Towns' shortcomings and they made the valid point that if the Timberwolves are going to play big then their big men must play with force in the paint. The Timberwolves' problem is that they are not attacking the paint offensively--and that problem must be fixed by Edwards and Towns. The problem is not drop coverage or Rudy Gobert or any other nonsense spewed by Green. If Green keeps lying about Gobert it would be great if someone had the guts to tell the truth about Green, and his triple single exploits on .389 field goal shooting for the 15-50 Warriors during the 2019-20 season when Green did not have Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, or Andre Iguodala to do the heavy lifting. I'll double down on what I said before: Green will be inducted in the Basketball Hall of Fame primarily because he was lucky enough to play alongside those four players.
It is also worth mentioning that Green went 0-3 versus Minnesota this season, and 1-2 last season (Golden State beat Minnesota once in 2022-23 when Green did not play, an example of addition by subtraction). If Green is so smart, maybe he should use that big brain to figure out how to do better than 1-5 versus the player and team that he keeps mocking.
The NBA and TNT should have been embarrassed to put Green on the air in the first place after his numerous violent incidents, and they should be even more embarrassed by how he is doing his part-time job. When David Stern was the NBA's Commissioner, he took the consistent position that it was important to promote the game and uplift the players. How does it promote the game to uplift a violent and petty person like Green to a position of prominence so that Green can mock the league's Defensive Player of the Year? If Gobert is as bad as Green suggests, then either the league is trash, or the media members who do the voting are idiots; neither scenario is a good look for the league.
The NBA under Commissioner Adam Silver has coddled Green for too long, and no one should be surprised when Green does something so egregious that the NBA will not be able to protect Green from legal consequences. What if Green had hit the New Orleans fan like he hit Poole? Green would be in jail, and he, the Warriors, and the NBA would likely be facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit. It is easy to retort that Green did not hit the fan because Green knows what boundaries he cannot cross, but Green has crossed multiple boundaries already, so relying on him to exercise good judgment is quite a gamble, even for a league that does not mind being in bed with legalized gambling operations.
Labels: Adam Silver, Domantas Sabonis, Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors, Jordan Poole, Jusuf Nurkic, NBA, New Orleans Pelicans, Rudy Gobert
posted by David Friedman @ 12:05 PM
