AS CURRY SITS AND GREEN FIGHTS “AN AGENDA,” EDWARDS AND WOLVES SURVIVE
Minnesota should have no issue advancing to the Western Conference finals as Curry deals with the “gut punch” of a hamstring strain while Green — technicals: five — says he is "not an angry Black man"
Just as there were times when Michael Jordan should have been hospitalized — a twist, a sprain, a strain, a crack, bad pizza or bad booze in Utah — it appears Anthony Edwards owns the same pliability. He continued to play Thursday night after his left ankle was stepped on by opponent Trayce Jackson-Davis.
It was then, as Steph Curry sits until next week with a left hamstring strain, that it became apparent the Minnesota Timberwolves should advance to the Western Conference finals. “A gut punch,” he said, in a woeful confession that could blow the NBA’s biggest star from the drama of a well-watched postseason. He’ll be out at least until Game 5, while the Warriors have too many issues — including Draymond Green, as I’ve pointed out — to survive against a better team.
“This is new, and from all that I'm learning about how quickly you can get back, there has to be a healing process," Curry said before his team’s 117-93 loss in Game 2. "You can't accelerate it more than what it's telling you. So it'll be one of those, after a week, really re-evaluating every day to understand when it's safe just to even think about playing, let alone how much can you push it.”
The lesson is unfortunate. Edwards is 23. Curry is 37. And much as the NBA office loves the dream of the Warriors playing the New York Knicks in the Finals, slow down. Edwards has been compared to Jordan before. Here’s another reason. "This one, I was really worried about, actually," Wolves coach Chris Finch said. “This one, I was really planning on not seeing him the rest of the game, to be honest with you.”
Yet there he was, at halftime, working out with the trainer on the court. “Once we got to like the third movement in my ankle, I'm like, 'All right, it's starting to feel good. If we tape it, I'll see how it feels,’ ’’ Edwards said. From there, his teammates said he had “an immortal ankle,” or as Jaden McDaniels put it, “He’s got to have his leg chopped off or some s—.” Julius Randle was tossing out fictional characters to ESPN.
“He's one of the more resilient people that I know," he said. "Nothing holds him down. He never misses games. For as much attention and effort teams do to try to stop him, he's never one to sit out a game. ... I don't know, he's like Ironman. I've seen him get hit, get knocked down so many times. Better off, he's like Wolverine. He gets hurt and he does something in the back. I don't know what the hell he does ... but he comes out and he balls. That's what he does.”
So, Steve Kerr and commissioner Adam Silver must deal with Green as the same, old, disgusting bully freak. He received his fifth technical foul of the playoffs — again, as we witnessed in the Houston series, he flattened Naz Reid to the floor with a left arm — and he’s two technicals or a Flagrant 2 foul call from a suspension. Imagine trying to beat the Wolves with Curry and Green on the bench. It’s possible when Green, whose actions have led to an indefinite league suspension, claims he’s the victim of an “agenda.”
"Looked like the angry Black man," Green told reporters. "I am not an angry Black man. I am a very successful, educated Black man with a great family, and I am great at basketball and great at what I do. The agenda to try to keep making me look like an angry Black man is crazy. I'm sick of it. It's ridiculous.”
There is no agenda against Green. He looks like a loon, again and again. How many times are we supposed to call him a kill-shot artist until Silver responds. Curry had to rush off the bench with his injury to calm him down and avoid another technical. Kerr looked ready to jump into one of 10,000 lakes. Of course, rather than stay quiet, Green later shouted at a fan who was ejected for firing a racial slur. The Warriors are heading home for two games, but they must return to Target Center.
“I could see he had gotten pretty upset, and I just didn't want him to get another technical, so I took him out at that point and I know he's going to have to be careful now that he's two techs away,” Kerr said. “He's going to have to stay composed. Obviously, we need him, and I'm confident that he will because he knows the circumstances.”
Oh, sure, be confident in Draymond Green. “He does have a habit of sort of flailing his arm to try to make sure the ref sees it, and he made contact, and that's what led to the tech,” Kerr said. “It's part of Draymond. It's the same thing that makes him such a competitor and a winner, puts him over the top sometimes, and we know that and it's our job to try to help him stay poised, stay composed. But the competition is so meaningful to him that occasionally he goes over the line.”
Occasionally? One more eruption means he’s gone. And the Warriors are done. “He knows how much we need him now more than ever,” said Jimmy Butler, who cannot overcome these problems without Curry. “So I don’t think he gets to seven (technical fouls). No, I think he knows. We all know. I thought he got fouled and was maybe trying to sell the call. Someone got hit, but it's crazy. Every time he does something, it's always a review and always ends up being something of that nature.”
Another suspension means Green could haunt his team from contending for another title. That happened in 2017, when he was suspended before the Warriors lost three games and handed the championship to LeBron James and Cleveland.
Kerr and Curry have had lengthy talks with him. Is Butler next? Might Green hit him? “He's a grown man," Butler said. “He knows how important he is to this squad, how important every game is and how important it is that he needs to be out there. Don't need to tell him nothing. He is very capable and he is very observant. He knows.”
What he doesn’t know will lead to Edwards continuing to emerge as a superstar. With the series tied at 1-1, he needs to explode as a scorer. “They let me get to the rim, and I'm not finishing, so it's kind of weird," he said. "I've got to get back to working on my finishing and stop working on my 3s because they're not letting me shoot 3s.”
He’ll figure it out. He’s playing. Curry is not. And Green is one emotional hiccup from joining him, which is pathetic.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.