Several hours before a Sixers-Warriors game in early March, Jerry Stackhouse sat astride the court in what was then known as the Wells Fargo Center and waxed poetic about Draymond Green.
Good Draymond, that is.
Stackhouse, who began his playing career in 1995 as a Sixer and spent 18 seasons in the league in all, is in his first year as a Warriors assistant coach – as their defensive coordinator, to be precise. And as he sat there after a Golden State shootaround, he discussed how crucial the 35-year-old Green is to the team’s efforts at that end of the court. How that has always been the case, throughout a 13-year career that has seen the club win four titles and reach the finals two other times.
“That guy’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer, from just what he does on the defensive side of the ball,” Stackhouse said. “He covers up so much. … Those four banners don’t hang up without him.”
Stackhouse wasn’t wrong about any of that. Green, despite standing just 6-6, is and always has been a brilliant defender, one of the best to ever play in the NBA. He’s able to guard multiple positions, and seldom in the wrong spot.
And while he has never been a big scorer, his passing and screening have been vital to the Warriors’ offensive exploits over the years. Particularly notable is the manner in which he and Stephen Curry always seem to see the court with the same eyes.
But.
And with Draymond – Bad Draymond, as it were – there’s always a “but.” Always a technical foul or a flagrant foul or some extracurricular nonsense that offsets all the good Green does on the court and reduces him to the equivalent of a pro wrestling heel.
It happened again Thursday night, when he elbowed Minnesota’s Naz Reid during Golden State’s loss to the Timberwolves in Game Two of the Western Conference semifinals. Green was slapped with his fifth T of the postseason. Two more, and he earns a one-game suspension.
He has already been suspended six times in his career, and his 23 ejections are second all-time to Rasheed Wallace’s 29. There was also the time in 2022 when he punched out his own teammate, Jordan Poole, and took a leave of absence that was described as voluntary.
So there was nothing surprising about what happened Thursday. The only thing that was different was his reaction.
“I’m tired of the agenda to make me look like the angry Black man,” Green told reporters. “I’m a very successful, educated Black man with a great family, and I’m great at basketball and great at what I do. The agenda to try to keep making me look like an angry Black man is crazy. I’m sick of it. It’s ridiculous.”
That seemed incredibly tone deaf, especially for a guy who is as bright as he is volatile. Agenda? Really? While ESPN’s Michael Wilbon argued that Green had a point (and while Green was reportedly subject to verbal abuse from Minnesota fans), any problems he has would appear to be of his own creation. Race has nothing to do with it. If you’re going to venture into the game’s gray areas (and beyond), you’re gonna suffer the consequences. Seems kinda simple, doesn’t it?
On Friday Internet sleuths circulated Draymond lowlights – videos of him choking Rudy Gobert and stomping Domantas Sabonis and clawing Nikola Jokic in the cornea. On and on it went, the only notable omission being Green’s below-the-belt blow to LeBron James in the 2016 Finals, which cost Draymond a game and went a long way toward costing the Warriors a title.
It’s also worth reviewing Ohm Youngmisuk’s ESPN.com piece from January, in which Green discussed undergoing therapy after earning an indefinite suspension for slapping Phoenix center Jusuf Nurkic last season.
“The reality is there’s a time for everything,” Green told Youngmisuk. “So I can still be me and can still mix it up with people, but there’s a time to get close to that line. There’s even a time to cross the line. But you can’t teeter it all the bleeping time. And I was just teetering it all the bleeping time.
“And that just becomes distasteful.”
Still is. Green remains Jekyll one moment, Hyde the next … and the next … and the next. The latter long ago overshadowed the former. The nonsense long ago obscured his many gifts.
He will make the Hall of Fame, as Stackhouse said. But he has sullied his own legacy. He is not the victim of anybody else’s agenda. That’s silly. All his issues are self-inflicted, the cross he must forever bear.