Draymond Green has missed the Golden State Warriors' last five games while serving a suspension for putting Rudy Gobert in a completely unnecessary chokehold on Nov. 14. Green, who is eligible to return on Tuesday at Sacramento, spoke on Sunday about the Gobert incident, and as usual, he found a way to express regret, sort of, for his actions and justify them at the same time.
Which really doesn't count.
For starters, Green took the part about the league basing the length of his suspension, in part, on his "history of unsportsmanlike acts" and ran off into la-la land with it.
"To continue saying, 'Oh, what he did in the past,' I paid for those [incidents]," Green said. "I got suspended for Game 5 of the [2016] Finals. So you can't keep suspending me for those actions.
"They've made it clear that they are going to hold everything against me that I've done before," Green continued. "That's OK. I need to adjust where I see fit. Where my teammates see fit, where my coaches see fit, front office sees fit."
Green playing the victim card here is hilarious. First of all, if Green was being held to a stricter standard, it would be his own fault. The kid who keeps punching kids at school is going to have less leeway with the principal. Green is a smart guy. This isn't a hard concept to grasp.
Is Draymond seriously trying to imply he's been minding his Ps and Qs since 2016 and just can't catch a break? If anything, it's the other way around. The man punched his own teammate in the face and didn't get suspended for a single game, then spent the rest of the season and even some of this season all but blaming the actual victim.
But that's the thing. Green isn't held to a higher standard. In fact, it could be easily argued that Green actually gets more leeway with officials than other players would if they acted the same way. The guy is constantly badgering officials and taunting opponents. His technical foul total could be double what it is and it would be entirely justified.
So if Green's rap sheet is coming into play, it's only after he's committed yet another offense that was egregious enough to demand meaningful consequence. It's not like Green was just another one of the players in that scuffle. Again, he put a guy who was posing absolutely zero threat to anyone in a full-on chokehold and dragged him away like he was some sort of hero saving the day.
"Anytime there is a situation and a teammate needs you to come to his defense, I'm going to come to their defense. Especially with someone [Klay Thompson] I've been a teammate with for 12 years.
"... I am always going to be there for my teammates," Green said. That's who I am. That's who I am as a teammate, that's who I am as a friend. ... Right, wrong or indifferent, look to your side and I'll be there -- or even in front of you."
Please. This is some real hero syndrome stuff. Watch this video below and try to say with a straight face that Gobert is trying to do anything more than break up the fight with some extremely light touching. More than that, tell me that Gobert was posing such a threat to Thompson that Green had no choice but to do what he did.
hes been waiting to do this forever pic.twitter.com/b5ZmWzgyWw
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) November 15, 2023
Yeah, the video speaks for itself. Green is no hero. He's a hotheaded bully who jumped at the chance to attack Gobert, with whom he has had longstanding beef with.
While Green thinks he's saving his teammates, he's actually costing them. Again. The Warriors lost three of the five games Green missed. They do not enjoy the margin for error they once did. Hell, they don't have any margin for error right now. The only reason the Warriors put up with Green is because he's so valuable on the court.
Rather than just say, "I'm sorry, I screwed up. It won't, or at least shouldn't happen again," all Green could do was offer a weak "I'm going to be me" rationale for his actions. It's nothing more than a thinly veiled middle finger to his growing list of critics.
"The consensus amongst all of us is that I'm going to be me no matter what. That's not going to change," Green said. "But in saying that, there's always a better way that something can be done. So it's figuring out a better way. That's the consensus among all of us."
This is rich. Green believes he needs to "figure out a better way" of expressing his true heroic self than putting grown men in choke holds or punching them in the face. Man, he's really on to something here. Insight like this must be why the Warriors just gave him another $100 million. Surely they're not paying Green to play basketball. No, they're paying him to "be who he is." The self-awareness is too much to handle.
Give it a rest. Green is still very good, but he's not the player he once was. And the Warriors certainly are not the team they once were. When the Warriors were competing for or winning championships, a lot of people were all too happy to pass off Green's antics as passion.
But when you're fighting to stay out of the play-in, or potentially to even make the play-in, the leash that Green has longed enjoyed, whether he realizes it or not, gets a lot shorter.
It's time for Green to take full accountability for his actions. Not partial accountability. Full accountability. Until he does, or even better, until he just stops doing this stuff, nobody, least of all the league office, is going to believe that he's learned a lesson. And if nobody believes he's learned a lesson, punishments, naturally, will continue to increase.
That's the way it works with punishment: If it doesn't change the behavior, it gets worse. And worse. And worse. It'll stay that way until it finally does change the behavior. That part is up to Green. So far, he hasn't said or done a thing to suggest he understands that.
