Draymond Green is among the most insightful individuals in professional sports. His background, frankness and fearlessness make his perspective welcome and needed in conversations that are meaningful or mundane.
Draymond Green is also among the most confounding individuals in professional sports. Even when the talented forward knows better, he doesn’t always do better, which should be a concern for the Golden State Warriors as they seek a fifth NBA title since 2015.
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Green met with the media Sunday for the first time since returning from a five-game suspension for putting Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert in an extended chokehold. Rather than apologize and move on, aware that the severity of the punishment was tied to previous misbehavior, Green questioned why his past was held against him.
Talk about lack of self-awareness.
Green unquestionably is the emotional leader of the Warriors. His energy, intellect and defensive intensity regularly set the tone. But there is a fine line between playing with passion and playing out of control, and Green has crossed that line so regularly that game officials and league executives have no choice but to factor it into the disciplinary equation.
Green has been ejected 18 times and suspended five times over his 12-year career. For all of his good — there has been enough of it to merit his inclusion in the Basketball Hall of Fame — there is also the reality that he has hurt the team when it matters most.
He was suspended from Game 5 of the 2016 Finals for accumulating too many flagrant fouls, and last season the league sat him for Game 3 against the Sacramento Kings — with his team trailing 2-0 in the best-of-seven series — for stomping on the chest of an opponent.
“To continue saying, ‘Oh, what he did in the past … ‘ I paid for those,” Green said Sunday. “I got suspended for Game 5 of the Finals. So you can’t keep suspending me for those actions.”
Except, they can. Think of it like a credit score. Delinquencies stay on your credit report long after you’ve paid the bill in full, lowering your score and negatively impacting your ability to acquire credit or borrow at a competitive rate.
“They’ve made it clear that they are going to hold everything against me that I’ve done before,” Green said. “That’s OK. I need to adjust where I see fit. Where my teammates see fit, where my coaches see fit, where our front office sees fit. The people I care about, I trust, when I hear them say something, it means something to me.”
Trust is an interesting word choice. Green broke it last year when he punched then-teammate Jordan Poole during practice. His poor judgment changed the course of the season, disrupting the fragile ecosystem of a professional locker room.
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Green apologized and promised to work hard at doing better, but here we sit today, with him being ejected from two games this season and coming off the longest suspension of his career.
It’s why words are irrelevant. Action is all that matters. Do, or do not. There is no try.
The Warriors bet on Green in the offseason when they chose to sign him to a four-year, $100 million extension and bring back forward Klay Thompson. It was done with the understanding they were chasing not only a fifth championship together but also a place in history.
That normally would be a significant accomplishment by itself. But the Warriors also want to stake a claim to being the NBA’s first true dynasty of this century.
The Los Angeles Lakers (six) and San Antonio Spurs (five) have won more rings since Michael Jordan cleared a path for others to experience a confetti shower after retiring for the second and final time from the Chicago Bulls in 1998, but the core stars of those teams were different over the seasons. The Lakers won with Shaquille O’Neal, then without him; the Spurs with David Robinson, then without him.
The Warriors have prevailed with a nucleus built around Green, Thompson and the incomparable Steph Curry. The trio was together for each of the championships — Andre Iguodala, now retired, was also a member of those clubs — and it’s why the organization chose to run it back while others spoke of blowing it up and starting anew.
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But Golden State has no chance of winning another title if Green doesn’t control his actions. The club knows it and he knows it — at least he says he knows it. Will his on-court behavior reflect that? It had better because the Warriors are no longer good enough to consistently overcome his transgressions.
They were ahead of the curve when their run first began, thanks to their motion offense and long-range accuracy. But the league has caught up. There is too much parity for them to have sustained success without Green, their defensive anchor and emotional compass. They lost the first two games of Green’s recent suspension and had to play at postseason intensity to win two of the final three, and even then it was a challenge.
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Green, who returns Tuesday night, has said he needs to do better while defiantly stating he has no plans to change the way he plays. Teammates can only hope for the former while praying against the latter. That might sound like a terrible strategy, but it’s all they have at this point — which is not to say it can’t work.
When the NFL initially made a pointed effort to protect defenseless receivers, hard-hitting safeties Adrian Wilson and Rodney Harrison refused to change their games. They didn’t like the fines that accompanied their physicality but viewed them as a cost of doing business.
It wasn’t until the NFL began taking them off the field with suspensions that the now-retired players adjusted their games. Both said the change was about being accountable to their teammates, acknowledging that they needed to be on the field for their clubs to have an improved chance of winning.
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The Warriors did not make a fuss about Green’s suspension because they openly admitted Green held the chokehold for too long. But a part of me wonders if they also considered the suspension a blessing in disguise. Better to lose him for a handful of games now — and hopefully get his attention — than to have Green fall out of line and potentially be suspended for an entire playoff series.
The latter is a possibility worth considering. When NBA executive vice president Joe Dumars suspended Green last postseason, he said the decision came down to “excessive and over-the-top actions, conduct detrimental and a repeat offender.” And when referee Tyler Ford ejected Green against the Timberwolves, he said it was due to “unnecessary and excessive conduct.”
Notice how the word “excessive” keeps popping up.
The NBA is sending a message that couldn’t be more clear. It is not going to tolerate Green crossing the line. Dumars ostensibly said as much after the recent suspension, telling reporters: “This was not some snap-of-the-finger decision to do this. There was much discussion, and back and forth, looking at the play itself over and over. And then ultimately we came to the decision that the act itself, and repeat offenses, actually did warrant a suspension.”
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Green knows where passion ends and excess begins. He’s too bright not to know. And the fact that Dumars, who has been a mentor to Green since Green was a high school standout in Saginaw, Mich., and Dumars was a star with the Detroit Pistons, should tell him just how much his behavior needs to change. But will it?
Green says he cares about his teammates and the organization, but those are words. His actions will tell us about his level of sincerity.
(Photo: Nic Antaya / Getty Images)
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