As a lifetime member of the Draymond Green Defender Club — those of us at DGDC who have conveniently looked past No. 23’s flagrants, technicals and ejections that have cost Warriors things as sizable as one NBA Championship, so we can applaud the FOUR championships he’s brought to the Bay — I confess Tuesday night was maybe the first time I began to worry just a little bit about our guy Dray.
Now, now. This is just a Jock Blog. Not a manifesto, not a rant. A discussion amongst friends. I’d urge you all to listen and discuss with me, but most of you made up your mind at the headline, so no big.
On the show this morning we heard it all: Rudy Gobert put his hands on Klay Thompson. You must defend your teammate at all times, and to do is a Marine Corps-level badge of honor. With Draymond, we take the good with the bad, and even when the bad looks bad, you think back to Lake Merritt and Market Street in June of 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022 and all you see is blue and gold confetti.
All true! All of it!
But as the late, great Ralph Barbieri also reminded us: Two things can equally true, and Draymond’s outbursts scrunched together in the last few days bring me a small radar warning of concern about the pattern.
The Warriors rolled into the six-game homestand last Saturday night with a tidy 6-3 record, feeling pretty good about the Chris Paul Era. Draymond himself gave a sort of signature statement about how the chemistry this year is so much better than last year, which he poetically called ‘horse s—t’. He instead said this year is marked by that very Warriors word — “joy”.
So I have to ask: Baby, baby . . . where has the joy gone?
In the span of less than a week, things got weird and less joyful, and most of it centered around Draymond.
Saturday night, Draymond earned a technical arguing a call, which put him on the brink. He later shoved Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell with a shoulder on a fast break, sending Mitchell sprawling — a fairly dirty play. The officials only saw it because Mitchell engaged with Green moments later, causing a replay review. Busted! Tech #2, and an ejection — losing Draymond’s defensive acumen in a game the Cavs wound up winning. Ouch.
Like so many do in 2023, Draymond took to social media to defend himself. In a pointed rebuke to anyone who floated the “Draymond Does This Too Much” crowd, he said “I am better at being Draymond than anybody!” (which is hard to dispute) and said he’d stay the same and ended with the memorable line: “Right back at it like an addict!”
I still chalk stuff like that up to the Draymond Green Experience. The manifesto did grab my attention — so I noticed when he got into it a little bit with Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards on Sunday night, and then I *definitely* noticed, as did the Western World, when he went “Rear Naked Choke” (thank you, Markus the Waterboy Boucher) on Rudy Gobert within the first 90 seconds Tuesday night.
Right back at it like an addict, indeed.
And now we begin the argument of how Gobert touched Klay first, and yes, that’s true and yes, how Gobert slithered out as a “peacemaker” is something the NBA will have to parse, but wow! Draymond flying in and putting Gobert in a long, excessive and fairly violent chokehold was eye-opening. Even by Draymond standards, this was a little much. Certainly, there was some personal animosity involved — but we don’t always get to act out our personal vendetta fantasies, not when we’re trying to win NBA games for the home side. And while defending Klay is the kind of teammate Draymond is, there were ways to do it without such a naked display of aggression.
What was the old line, the first guy to use a rear naked chokehold is the first man to run out of ideas?
Put Tuesday night in context with Saturday night, and his Sunday manifesto — there’s a little mini-pattern of behavior that has my Dray Radar up. The player has earned all of our trust over the past dozen years, but it’s been a bad week for my dude.
And at some point, isn’t the veteran leader supposed to be the voice of wisdom, not inflection points of rage?
Bottom line: I love Draymond Green the player and his contribution to Bay Area lore and his hoped-for contributions to the 2023-24 season, which has title aspirations. But it’s hard to help the team win when you’re not on the court. And it’s no fun for anyone for Draymond not to be on the court because of entirely preventable things.
The NBA will certainly suspend Draymond for at least a couple of games. It’s up to No. 23 to make sure this doesn’t happen too often again.
