THE ONLY PRAYER FOR DRAYMOND GREEN: BAN HIM THE REST OF THE SEASON

His violent play is so unacceptable and disgraceful, commissioner Adam Silver should send him away and find him significant counseling after 12 NBA seasons, as Green himself says he needs

     Draymonded? It serves as a verb in the lexicon. Attacked by a Draymond would be a noun. A Draymonding is an adjective. To refer to this fallible soul as anything beyond a formal name we’re inclined to forget — Draymond Jamal Green, from the Michigan town of Saginaw — no longer works in everyday life.

     Now we have an NBA player who was smacked brutally in the chops by a Dray Fray, Jusuf Nurkic, saying he’s relieved he wasn’t strangled Tuesday night. “What’s going on with him? I don’t know,” Nurkic asked reporters after the 19th ejection in a career of Dray Melees. “Personally, I feel that brother needs help. I’m glad he didn’t try to choke me. It has nothing to do with basketball. I hope whatever he’s got in his life, it gets better.”

     To which Dray didn’t disagree. “I think we all need help,” he said. “I don’t think any of us are perfect.” Might someone in the front office of this league, if not the Golden State Warriors, seek long-term counseling for him? Why would David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, want him to progress on a highly watched program, “Inside The NBA,” where he might rough up the studio crowd?

     This comes only weeks after Rudy Gobert, locked in a nine-second headlock during a Dray Stray, suggested he was close to being asphyxiated. “He’s grabbing me, he’s grabbing me, he’s grabbing me. But he tried,” Gobert said. “It was a long time, and if he knew how to choke, it could have been way worse. He tried to. His intention was to really take me out.”

     Last time the Draykiller was brought to our attention, I wondered if a handgun or a long bloody knife might be next in his arsenal. Now, after he was suspended a mere five games for the Gobert throttle, commissioner Adam Silver should ban him from the league the remainder of the season. This will be the sixth suspension of his career, which includes stomping on the chest of Domantas Sabonis last spring and swiping LeBron James in the crown jewels and calling out Kevin Durant, who couldn’t handle him anymore and left the Warriors. Last season, the Draymonster slugged another teammate, Jordan Poole, who no longer is with the franchise. To say this is sick and psychotic stuff, call-the-cops scariness inside arenas — I wrote that in November, right?

     So what else is the league supposed to do with an unassailable villain but haul him away from injuring other humans? “A reckless, dangerous play,” said Phoenix coach Frank Vogel after a flagrant-2 foul was called on the court for “unnecessary and excessive” contact. Gobert referred to the actions as “clown behavior.” Nurkic is closer to the truth in asking, “What’s going on with him? I don’t know. Personally, I feel that brother needs help.”

     In an association that tends to Ja Morant when he holds guns, why would Silver allow Dray to carry on when his behavior has worsened in his 12th season? Why would team owner Joe Lacob, who constructed the Chase Center with franchise money and is spending $400 million in a last dynasty attempt, want this madness to advance further? And every time Dray is asked to explain his latest mishap, he plays dumb, as if we’re not onto the scam.

     “He was pulling my hip and I was swinging away to sell the call. Made contact with him,” Dray said. “As you know, I’m not one to apologize for things I meant to do. But I do apologize to Jusuf because I didn’t intend to hit him. I sell calls with my arms. I don’t fall to sell the call. I’m not a flopper. So I was just selling a call … and I swung and, unfortunately, hit him. It’s a hard hit.”

     So he admits to pulling back his arm to Sedona and ramming Nurkic with it. Yet, he doesn’t think he should be reprimanded? Dray has been dragging out this junk for years. “I also don’t think I’m an accurate enough puncher to do a full 360 and connect with someone,” he said. Nah, he’s Mike Tyson in his prime. The only fool to buy his nonsense is coach Steve Kerr, a clean player in his career and a clean player in the world — who still believes in Green’s dirty-work skills and continues to defend him. Bob Myers is long gone as the team’s general manager. Will Lacob do something smart with his money and tell the new boss, Mike Dunleavy Jr., to send Dray away for a very long time?

     “Huge swing,” Kerr said. “We need him. We need Draymond. He knows that. We have talked to him. He's got to find a way to keep his poise and be out there for his teammates. Draymond is still a hell of a player. If we’re going to be a really good team, we need him.”

     Does it occur to Kerr late at night, when he has trouble sleeping amid a 10-13 nightmare, that he’s still protecting someone beyond rationality? “These are tough nights,” Kerr said. “But this is the NBA. It’s a really difficult league. It’s a dream job, but it’s also incredibly difficult. You get booed, benched, traded, injured, cut. It’s not easy. Every season is filled with ups and downs, moments where you really struggle individually. We’re all human. Every player goes through stuff.”

     Dray brings it on himself, every year. He knows what Kerr is saying, having heard it since midway through the last decade. “I didn’t intend to put the team in a bad spot,” he said. “I intended to get a foul and I made contact with him. To Steve’s point, of course, I need to be there for us to win. I understand that. It’s why I haven’t been arguing with refs since I’ve been back, I haven’t got into it with any players since I’ve been back. I do understand that. Unfortunately, bad luck. Trying to draw a foul and I made contact with him. But this ain’t those same things.”

     Those things are uglier, actually, on a team that can’t handle the downfall of Klay Thompson and might be forced to move forward with Stephen Curry and newbies. A dynasty, this is not anymore. They won in June 2022, the end. “I played like crap," Thompson said after he was benched on a seven-point night. "If you've ever played basketball before, you know what you are capable of. You always want to be out there competing. That's just facts, but I deserved to be benched. Twenty games in, I haven't found a rhythm. Of course, it frustrates me. You think I’m gonna just chill? I’m freaking competitive, man. At the end of the day, I’m one of the most competitive people to put this uniform on. But whatever. I didn’t bring it tonight.”

     I can’t imagine Kerr returning to this failure when his deal expires at season’s end. At that point, Lacob and Dunleavy should find a place for Dray and let Klay sign a contract elsewhere. Meanwhile, what of Curry as a prime-time player? No network is televising games of a contending pretender. “We need everybody to play at a level that we expect. When it doesn't happen, we lose,” Curry said. “It's pretty simple. That's the predicament we're in. We all have to play better together.”

     An NBA aficionado’s thought process has merged Curry, Thompson and Dray in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Let’s leave Dray out of the mix. He doesn’t deserve to be remembered with distinction as long as opposing players are saying, early in a long season, that they’re “glad he didn’t try to choke me.” Jusuf Nurkic is 6-11, 290 pounds. Rudy Gobert is 7-1, 260 pounds. They don’t swing back. Someone should, in the league office.

     At some point, Dray will need to Pray. The commissioner doesn’t have the balls to jilt Lacob and a recent four-time champion, but if he nudges away a lunatic for the holidays and the entire season, maybe it will save his life.

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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.