GO AWAY, DRAY — GREEN MOCKS NBA AND MENTIONS POINT SPREAD TO TEAMMATES
The league should ban him after he shouted “five point five” and made “an inappropriate comment that questions the integrity of game officials,” which only compounds many years of violent behavior
The NBA banned Donald Sterling for making racist remarks on a recorder. Jontay Porter was crushed after gambling schemes. Referee Tim Donaghy bet on games and explained his life in a documentary. Drugs, guns, crooks — expel them all.
But if commissioner Adam Silver is serious about integrity — and isn’t protecting a long-term TV star — he’ll spend a day or two or three exploring the all-time nuisance, Draymond Green, and ask if he also should be banned. This isn’t about his deplorable series of bodily, facial and crotch devastations, some of which have continued in an ugly postseason. This isn’t about an “agenda,” where he claims the public views him as “the angry Black man. I’m not an angry Black man. I’m 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 keep making me look like an angry Black man is crazy. I'm sick of it. It's ridiculous.”
Green is not an angry Black man. He is a crazy man, beyond bonkers. As the Golden State Warriors were losing Game 3 to the Minnesota Timberwolves — 102-94, with 15.2 seconds remaining — Green was laughing by the bench as he reminded teammates of the game’s point spread.
“Five point five,” he told them, using his hand.
Why would a man known internally as a proud competitor — just ask his coach and teammates — even know about a point spread. And why announce it when the Warriors were failing to win without the injured Steph Curry? Knowing his personal imbalances, was Green actually alerting his mates to beat the spread? Was he, as the league said, questioning if the officials were aware of the spread? This is why Donaghy and Porter were banned. This comes as Major League Baseball finally removed Pete Rose and other deceased players from the permanently ineligible list. Rose had been docked since 1989 for gambling on the team he managed, the Cincinnati Reds.
And Green is mouthing off the spread for Internet microphones? Jonathan Kuminga hit a 3-pointer with 5.3 seconds left. The final score: 102-97.
The dirty stunt should be more than enough for Silver, who indefinitely suspended Green early last season. At that point, he considered retiring from the game. “I told him, ‘Adam, this is too much for me. … This is too much. It's all becoming too much for me — and I'm going to retire.’ ’’ Green said. “And Adam said, 'You're making a very rash decision and I won't let you do that.’ ’’
This time, Silver should urge him to retire. He should forget thoughts that Green could become the next Charles Barkley on TV, though ESPN might not want him as Turner goes away. “We had a long, great conversation — very helpful to me. Very thankful to play in a league with a commissioner like Adam who's more about helping you than hurting you; helping you than punishing you,” Green said. “He's more about the players."
This player just burned the league and its officials. Wednesday, Green was fined $50,000 for “making an inappropriate comment that questions the integrity of game officials.” He should be removed from the league. When the sports world knew what was coming in recent weeks, he was called for five technical fouls and two flagrant fouls as the Warriors were eliminated by the Wolves.
Who wants to watch this guy anymore? And I include Warriors fans.
How does coach Steve Kerr, who loathes Donald Trump, continue to stand up for Green when he’s a mugger on the court? How does Curry, a life sweetheart, keep defending him? They know he can be a superb defender, but think they need an enforcer. This man has poisoned what Curry, Kerr and owner Joe Lacob have done in the Bay Area. In his career, according to Spotrac, he has paid the league $3.2 million for suspensions and $992,000 in fines after more than 230 technicals.
After a 121-110 loss in Game 5, he emphasized the future — though the ages of Green, Curry and Butler are almost older than Alcatraz. The Wolves and Oklahoma City Thunder will hush any more hopes, as Minnesota coach Chris Finch said, “They’re no longer in their dynastic phase.”
“I don’t worry about that one bit,” Green said. “I feel like I’m still improving, I feel like Steph’s still improving, I feel like Jimmy’s still improving. When you’re improving in this league, it treats you well. It’s when you stop improving is when the bottom falls out.
“I think I still have that belief, wholeheartedly. That has not changed one bit. And you retool, you do whatever it is that you got to do to take that next step and give yourself a better chance.”
How about trading Green to Detroit, back to his Michigan roots? Lacob doesn’t want to hear it, telling The Athletic: “I am pretty positive that if we had Steph, we’d have won this series.”
Kerr felt the same way. “I don't even have to think what (if),” Kerr said. "I know we had a shot. I know we could have gone the distance. Maybe we wouldn't have, but it doesn't matter.”
ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins asked why Green couldn’t handle Julius Randle, who averaged 24.3 points, 8.0 assists and 6.3 rebounds in the series. He hit 52.6 percent of his shots, 42.9 percent of his threes, and committed two turnovers. “Been waiting on Draymond to accept the challenge of guarding Randle but I guess that won’t happen,” Perkins said.
Here’s the “agenda,” as Green puts it.
He thinks he’s successful and educated.
He is disgusting. Send him away. Kia can stop running the commercial where the wolf eyes him down.
I will ask again: Can the wolf eat him?
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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.