Draymond Green's anger is becoming his lasting legacy as athleticism fades
The emotion that drove Draymond Green to the NBA's 2017 Defensive Player of the Year award, four All-Star appearances and four championships has been described any number of ways — "competitive spirit," "energy," "bravado," "the frenzy," "passion," "a fiery attitude," "aggression" and, yes, even "that rage."
As former Golden State Warriors guard Leandro Barbosa told ESPN for a 2016 piece titled, "Golden State's Draymond Green problem," the forward is at his best as "the guy that always gets mad, the guy everybody hates."
Everyone in the organization — front-office members, coaches, teammates and even the man himself — has spoken ad nauseam over the past decade about the importance of Green striking a balance between anger and action. The dynasty's success has depended on his straddling that line, they've all said.
"If you take my fire away, I may be a decent player because I can really think the game," Green told Howard Beck, then of Bleacher Report, in 2018, when the Warriors' wagon was rolling to its third title in four years. "I'd still have that, but if you take my fire away, I'm not near the guy that I am and the player that I am."
This ignores Green's ability to play basketball. In addition to his anger and acumen was an athleticism — never elite by NBA means but enough to switch onto any position, help at the rim, recover to the perimeter. Enough to drop a 32-15-9 line in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals. Enough to put his acumen into action.
But what happens when his athleticism fades, when he cannot compete with his less "fiery" rivals, when he can no longer make good on his basketball IQ? The only thing left for Green to act upon, I fear, is the anger.
Every so often in the past, Green crossed the line between passion and destruction, and each time the Warriors defended it as a fuel that drives them, for better or worse. But with increasing frequency, it is for worse, and Golden State is running out of ways to excuse his antics in the name of competition. You take the good with the bad only when the good helps deliver hardware, untold fortune and a new arena for everyone.
Seven years ago, in the midst of Golden State's record-setting 73-9 campaign, after Green reportedly threatened head coach Steve Kerr and his teammates during a heated halftime exchange overheard from the locker room, was the first time we heard this familiar refrain from Green and Golden State — let Draymond be Draymond.
Months later, as Green kneed and kicked former Oklahoma City Thunder center Steven Adams' groin in consecutive games, unraveling in the 2016 Western Conference finals, and then punched LeBron James' groin one series later, partly costing his team the greatest single season in NBA history, it was the same.
Green: "I'm never going to be careful. I'm just going to be me, and the game will play out how it plays out."
And Kerr: "The dangerous thing is, if you try to temper him too much, are you taking away his edge?"
After Green repeatedly called Kevin Durant "a bitch" during a November 2018 verbal altercation that spilled from a timeout huddle into the locker room, Durant reportedly warned Green, "Everybody keeps saying, 'Draymond's emotional' and 'That's just Draymond.' As your brother, I'm not giving you that out. ... That's an excuse that everybody's allowed you to have, and I'm not allowing you to use that excuse anymore."
Then-Warriors general manager Bob Myers issued a one-game suspension and said, "Basketball is an emotional sport, these things happen, we dealt with it in the manner we thought fit, and so we’re going to move on." Green swore he learned from the incident, even as he described it as something to "get through" rather than fix. Durant left in free agency at the end of the season, and Green later informed us, "I laughed in their — literally laughed in their face" when the Warriors asked him to apologize for his behavior.
When Golden State retreated from the NBA consciousness amid Durant's departure, back-to-back season-ending injuries to Klay Thompson and a 2020 tanking campaign, so, too, did Green's ire (though he still ranked among league leaders in technical fouls, despite his own injury concerns). He had nothing to compete for.
Then, when the Warriors returned to championship contention in 2022, Green nearly derailed them again. His athleticism failing him, Green resorted to mucking up the NBA Finals, pushing Jayson Tatum, running over Grant Williams, resting his feet on Jaylen Brown, shoving him and trying to pull his shorts down. It got so bad that Kerr benched Green at the end of Game 4 for the most important minutes of the series. Yet when Green summoned a throwback performance in a clinching Game 6, the Warriors once again lauded him as the Stephen Curry of their defense, and Green accepted credit for his intensity's impact on another title.
"Draymond, his personality and his energy, his imprint is all over our team," Kevon Looney said at the time.
When it's good, it's good, but it hasn't been good for a minute. Last season began with Green punching then-teammate Jordan Poole in the face, for which he received no suspension, and ended not long after he stomped on Sacramento Kings center Domantas Sabonis' chest, for which he received a one-game ban.
After a second-round playoff loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, Kerr said in one breath that Green's fight with Poole derailed their championship aspirations and added in another, "If Draymond is not back, we’re not a championship contender." The Warriors rewarded him with a four-year, $100 million extension in July.
Green is now seven years removed from threatening Kerr and countless excuses from accepting blame. Forgotten is his alleged assault of a college student in July 2016. Remembered are his defense and his titles.
Except the Warriors are slipping from championship contention, Green's outbursts are becoming more frequent, and the correlation is coming into focus. He violently choked Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert at the end of last month, earning a five-game suspension and expressing no regret or apology upon his return. Instead, we got the same old song-and-dance routine from Green and Golden State.
"I'm going to play basketball the way I play basketball,” said Green, somehow thinking that is basketball. "The way I play basketball has gotten me here. The way I play basketball has brought me a tremendous amount of success, individually and from a team standpoint, so I will always be myself. But I do understand and know there is room for growth, and I need to be better in those moments in different situations."
Kerr said, "Draymond was wrong. He knows that. It’s a bad look. The five games is deserved, and we move forward." Then added: "Our defense instantly gets better with Draymond. We know that."
Draymond Green turns 34 years old in March. If there were growth to be had, we would have seen some by now. Instead, on Tuesday, Green swung at Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkić's face, earning an ejection, and declared, "As you know, I’m not one to apologize for things that I meant to do, but I do apologize to Jusuf because I didn’t intend to hit him." His past behavior eliminates that benefit of the doubt.
Now, Green is suspended indefinitely. When he returns, we await the next incident. This might soon fall under the guise of competitive spirit. Or the Warriors will fade from the spotlight, Green's ability to prevent it will succumb to his age, and all that is left for someone who views every slight as a threat to his manhood will be the anger.
