Draymond Green toed the line during Game 2 of the NBA Finals, but at one point it appeared that his night might be ending early.
After receiving his first technical foul early in the game, Green got tied up with Jaylen Brown after fouling the Celtics guard on a 3-point shot. The two were separated quickly, but not before Green tried to pull down Brown’s shorts, at least according to him.
According to Joe Vardon of The Athletic, the Celtics squandered a prime opportunity to get Draymond ejected.
“The Celtics had a golden opportunity there with Draymond and Jaylen,” Vardon said on KNBR. “At first blush, I thought that it was Jaylen who maybe didn’t understand the situation and was a little tentative in the dust up, but that wasn’t the case. Jaylen was upset with him and was intending to stand over Draymond and tangle with him, and Tatum and Smart grabbed the two of them. They let that go just another two seconds and [referee Zach] Zarba would have had no choice but to issue a double technical and Draymond would’ve been gone.
“I went into the Boston room last night thinking about Jaylen and wondering if he was aware of the situation and if he wasn’t then he should’ve been. That’s kind of a next level thing. There’s two things to this. One we already said, which is his teammates pulled him off of him. Secondly, Jaylen said he wasn’t aware of the first tech.”
Vardon also didn’t like the way Jayson Tatum talked about the altercation postgame.
“Then Tatum himself is up there laughing and is like ‘We know Draymond is like that and we love him for it. I was Draymond’s teammate.’ I thought that was interesting and I was talking to some Boston writers this morning about this here at breakfast. That’s not the right attitude for the Finals.
“I know we’re in a different era where we share the same agent and they all play AAU and…team USA this past summer in Tokyo. But that’s just not how the Finals are supposed to be.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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