I suppose you may’t blame Draymond Green for persevering with to speak about his touchdown a haymaker on teammate Jordan Poole previous to the beginning of the season. He’s an enormous character. He’s open with the media, which, in flip, goes to take advantage of him for all of the content material he is keen to supply. He will get requested the questions, and he solutions them.
Still, I preserve enthusiastic about Poole and him having to repeatedly hearken to Green speak about an incident that occurred over three months in the past. Poole was fast in addressing it, and fast to maneuver on, at the very least publicly. On Oct. 16, he supplied the next assertion on the matter:
“[Draymond] apologized and [was] skilled,” Poole informed reporters. “We plan on dealing with ourselves that approach. We’re right here to play basketball and everyone on our group and within the locker room is aware of what it takes to win a championship, and we’ll try this on the court docket. … That’s actually all I’ve to say on the matter. We’re right here to win a championship and preserve hanging banners.”
Meanwhile, Draymond continues to be being requested about it and nonetheless not shying away from discussing it in depth. He may say he’s achieved speaking about it, which might most likely be higher for Poole and the Warriors as a complete. But he does not. The most up-to-date instance got here in an interview with Taylor Rooks, who requested Green if he and Poole have put the incident behind them and whether or not their relationship had modified.
After a protracted, dramatic pause worthy of Oscar consideration, Green talked about how he and Poole are nonetheless locker neighbors and nonetheless experience the identical buses, which is not actually saying something; they’re on the identical group, in any case. Then he mentioned it: “Did [the punch] change our relationship? Absolutely,” Green mentioned. “That’s nonetheless a piece in progress. I’ll all the time proceed to be keen to try this work as a result of I used to be fallacious.”
From there you may watch the remainder of Green’s response after one other drawn-out, dramatic pause.
So hear, Green is a great, reflective man. It’s not arduous to consider that he’s genuinely contemplating his phrases rigorously right here and measuring his response and tone. It simply makes me sort of chuckle how deep he is making this. He socked a teammate. It was one other instance of his being largely unable to regulate his feelings, identical to when he blew up on Kevin Durant, or gave LeBron James the jab that probably value the Warriors a championship. Let’s not put an excessive amount of inventory in how remorseful and considerate Green has been within the aftermath. He did it. And it’d nonetheless be screwing up the Warriors’ season behind closed doorways.
Read between the traces right here, and it certain does not sound like Poole needs something to do with Green. That sort of rigidity, even when unstated, might be arduous to fully push apart in a locker room. Having no data of the interior workings of Golden State’s locker room dynamics, it looks like there’s sufficient stability and veteran fairness in that group, beginning with Stephen Curry, Green, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala and Kevin Looney, that that is unlikely to nonetheless be a serious problem.
But Green not letting it die within the media shouldn’t be permitting for this incident to actually be behind them. It’s retaining it alive. Green is not going to chop it off. He is a podcaster. A character. He’s going to kill on TV when he retires. He’s probably the most sincere athletes you’ll ever meet, for higher or worse, equally keen to advertise his many strengths as he’s his few flaws. That’s respectable. Even gratifying. But how a lot dialogue is sufficient?
