Draymond Green Needs To Shut Up
Before I say anything, I think whoever is reading this deserves a few disclaimers. I’m a Celtics fan, so feel free to take whatever I write with a grain of salt. I really don’t care if you agree with me. I don’t care if you think I’m being biased, because I feel personally compelled to tell what I believe is the truth based on the information I have. Which is something Draymond Green seems to be having a lot of trouble with right now.
Ok.
You may have missed it, but Draymond Green recently spoke up about the national discussion on Celtics big man Kelly Olynyk as a dirty player.
“Kelly Olynyk is a dirty player, man,” he said on something called the “Dray Day” podcast. “He’s dirty. Dirty player, man. I don’t respect guys like that. I mean, I know he’s not like the greatest basketball player of all time, so maybe you feel like you got to like do that, but you don’t like — just dirty. Like I don’t respect that man, he dirty.”
Let me stop right there. It is absolutely baffling that Green could publicly call someone a dirty player given his history, which we will detail later. But it’s a low blow to talk down about a player’s ability in the same sentence that you question his integrity.
“It’s a big difference between knowing all the tricks because knowing all the tricks ain’t doing stuff to hurt people. Like come on, he really yanked this dude’s shoulder out of place. I don’t roll with that man, dude dirty.”
The play Green is referencing is this one from the 2015 playoffs, in which Olynyk got wrapped up with Kevin Love resulting in Love separating his shoulder and missing the playoffs.
I honestly don’t think Olynyk meant to hurt Love. I think their bodies got awkwardly tangled and an unfortunate injury ensued.
But I don’t claim to know what is going on in someone’s head in a situation like that. I don’t know if Olynyk was trying to hurt Love. Maybe he was. But it’s not Green’s place to tell everyone else what Olynyk meant to do.
(This recent uproar against Olynyk was caused by an illegal screen he set on Washington’s Kelly Oubre Jr., which is weird because every big man has set illegal screens and plenty of them. It’s particularly ironic that Green would speak up in the wake of this, considering he played with the dirtiest screener in the game in Andrew Bogut for years and never had anything to say about it.)
“This dude be out here trying to hurt people man, I don’t rock with bruh like that.”
Well-stated, Dray. Tell me, what were you trying to accomplish here?
That kind of looks like you were trying to hurt someone. It sure looked more intentional than what Olynyk did.
This isn’t an isolated incident. There’s an actual three minute video on YouTube showing Draymond’s kicks from last year’s Western Conference Finals. Some of these aren’t clearly intentional, but you can still see that Green frequently uses his legs as clubs with the intent of hurting other people.
Let’s not forget the time he threw Michael Beasley:
Or when he took Trevor Ariza’s legs out:
Or when he threw an elbow at Blake Griffin’s throat, à la Metta World Peace:
Or when he tried to give Marcus Smart an Attitude Adjustment:
And of course, most infamously, when Green decided to try and give LeBron James of all people a nut tap during Game 4 of last season’s Finals.
Green was rightfully suspended the for the next game, and that, compounded with the fire that the incident lit under LeBron, led to the Cavs’ historic 3–1 comeback in the series and a summer of humiliating jokes made at the Warriors’ expense.
I think you get my point. There’s hardly anyone in sports with less qualified to get high and mighty on another player for “dirty play.”
Celtics star Isaiah Thomas seemed to come to the same logical conclusion, and he came to his teammate’s aid, saying, “I don’t know how he can call anybody dirty. It is what it is. Everybody’s got a comment or something to say. That’s all it is.”
To which Green responded with the following tweet:
Really Dray? If Green hadn’t lucked into playing with a two-time MVP as well as two of the greatest shooters ever, he wouldn’t have anywhere near as much team success as he has had.
Don’t get me wrong, Green is a great player. He’s the easy pick for Defensive Player of the Year, and his offensive versatility has made the Warriors a juggernaut on that end. But he could never accomplish what Thomas did this season: being the only offensive star on a one-seed.
Remember when Draymond called out Paul Pierce for his retirement tour on live TV earlier this season by saying “They don’t love you like that. You ain’t Kobe”? Draymond could never accomplish what Paul Pierce did as a 25-point per game scorer for years. As of now, Green is to Pierce what Pierce is to Kobe: not in his league, not on his level, not in his stratosphere.
I appreciate a competitor like Green, because we don’t have many of them left. But Green is following Pistons Isiah Thomas’ model as a talented irritant who has become so self-important that his mouth and actions put him on the wrong end of every incident he gets involved in.
Green may not care what anyone else thinks of him, but judging from the fact that he has his own podcast, it seems like he wants his voice to be heard. If he wants that voice to be respected at all, he should learn to look inward instead of condemning other players for doing exactly what he does.
