This is the deal offered by the Golden State Warriors.
They live with the threats Draymond Green sometimes poses to their championship aspirations due to the benefits they have when he’s at his best.
His energy and determination can frustrate an opponent into making big mistakes, and they can lift and encourage teammates. But he also regularly toes the line between playing hard and playing dirty, and the Warriors put up with it because it can help them win titles. With his history of mistakes and taunts, he doesn’t benefit from the suspicion when his behavior is in a gray area, and that can cost the Warriors dearly.
Now she has it, again.
Thursday night, Golden State will face the Sacramento Kings in Game 3 of the first round of the NBA series that the Kings lead 2-0. The Warriors will have to try to save themselves from falling into a near impossible 3-0 deficit without Green, who suspended the league for Game 3 after stepping on the chest of Kings’ Dominas Sabonis in Game 2 Monday. Green was assessed a flagrant 2 and ejected with 7 minutes, 3 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.
The NBA explained that the suspension had more to do with Green’s “unsportsmanlike business history” than it did with Sabonis, who precipitated events by grabbing Green’s ankle as he lay on the floor. In an interview with ESPN, Joe Dumars, the NBA’s executive vice president in charge of player discipline, said the way Green mocked the Sacramento crowd afterward also influenced the decision. As the officials reviewed the play, Green yelled at the crowd who were yelling at him, while clapping and signaling to the crowd to keep going.
The comment may not seem fair, but it’s not a result that should surprise Golden State or Green.
When the Warriors were in the middle of their unstoppable second annual run to the NBA Finals seven years ago, Green might have cost them a championship.
The league has a points system which leads to automatic suspensions related to flagrant fouls. Players are evaluated 2 points for a flagrant 2 foul and 1 point for a -1 offence. If they exceed three points during the post-season, they are suspended for one game.
In 2016, Green was rated a flagrant 1 foul for a Cavaliers player – LeBron James – injured in the groin. Green already had three points for flagrant fouls, so he was suspended in the fifth game.
“We’ve had success thanks to Draymond’s competitiveness and his superiority, and that’s been very important to us this year,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said at the time. “And maybe that same quality has led him to this point — just his competitiveness and his passion. And that’s all part of it.”
Green watched the game from a booth at the adjacent baseball stadium in Oakland, California, and his team was leading 3-1 at the time, but lost the Finals to Cleveland.
It was Green’s only commentary in the elimination match until Tuesday, but his behavior has come under scrutiny several times.
Last season, Green was ejected from the Warriors’ Game 1 second-round series against the Memphis Grizzlies for committing a flagrant-2 foul.
“I’m not going to change the way I play basketball,” Green said later during that series. “He got me this far. I got three championships, four All-Stars, Defensive Player of the Year. I wouldn’t change now.”
During Game Two, in Memphis, he took an elbow to the face and had to leave to get stitches. Fans jeered at him, and Green showed his middle fingers to the crowd as he left the game.
In last year’s Finals against Boston, Green showed how his intensity on the field can help his team and frustrate opponents.
“He’ll do whatever it takes to win,” said Celtics guard Jaylen Brown, who called some of Green’s behavior “illegal.” “He’s going to pull you, he’s going to take you, he’s going to try to ruin the game because that’s what he does to their team. Nothing surprising. Nothing I’m surprised about. He raised his body to try to stop us, and we have to raise his body.”
Green’s teammate Stephen Curry said during that series: “You feel him in his presence, and the other team feels his presence and his power. And that’s contagious to all of us.”
Warriors thrive on this energy. Boston fans booed Greene, which he admitted upset him a bit. But after the Warriors won the championship in Game 6 in Boston, Green’s teammates sang the same cheer to him in the locker room after the game. Their faith in green triumphed again.
The problem comes when it goes too far.
It happened in games. It also happened last fall during a practice, when he punched his teammate, Jordan Paul, in the face. Green took time away from the team and apologized. Paul reacted like someone wanted the whole incident to go away.
It’s all part of what keeps Green under the disciplinary microscope.
This week’s suspension did not follow the NBA’s usual method of catching flagrant infractions. Green paid the price for his reputation.
Another player may not have been suspended for what he did. The league may have considered that Sabonis grabbed Green’s leg, incited the reaction, and felt that ejecting him from the game was sufficient punishment. Golden State lost the game after all. The NBA may have given another player the benefit of the doubt, thinking he didn’t really mean to hurt anyone, and was simply looking for a place to land his foot, Green insisted after the game.
“That’s a possibility, yeah,” Dumars said. Interview with ESPN.
Instead, the league made a decision that threatened Golden State’s season.
“Every time I make a mistake, I hope he learns from it and gets better,” Bob Myers, Golden State’s general manager and president of basketball operations, told reporters Wednesday.
For now, though, the Warriors have accepted that this is Green. Through their actions, they accept that they will sometimes have to bear the consequences of his behavior because the good with Greene has outweighed the bad for them. Maybe this will start to change, if the bad starts to outweigh the good.
This outcome was a risk the Warriors had taken for years.