The Golden State Warriors faced off against the Phoenix Suns Tuesday night, and the game certainly turned out to be the fight everyone believed it would. Just not in the literal sense...
With 8:23 left in the 3rd quarter, Warriors SG Brandin Podziemski was inbounding the ball on the side of the Warriors bench. Initially just a routine play seen many times every game turned to disaster, because in the midst of this simple inbound, Warriors F Draymond Green gets tangled up with Suns F Jusif Nurkic. Since Draymond Green will always act as reckless as he possibly can on the basketball court, he does what any sane person would do and swing his body around and make direct contact on a punch to Nurkic's temple. Of course, the play went to further review and was in fact deemed a flagrant 2 technical foul on Draymond Green which warrants an ejection from the game. The Warriors would then go on to lose the game in nail bitting fashion, 119-116 final.
Players lose their cool all the time. Players take it too far sometimes and get ejected, I get it. If you have ever played sports you'd understand what I mean. The problem with this lies with Draymond Green, who is in elite company when it comes to this conversation. In fact, only one player in the history of the NBA has done it better than Draymond Green. That player is Rasheed Wallace who was ejected 29 times throughout his career. After last nights game, Draymond Green has now earned his 19th career ejection and his THIRD ejection of this season. It's not even Christmas. At some point we all have to ask ourselves what good he actually is doing on a NBA roster. Yes, he can still defend, he can still rebound too. I am not saying he brings nothing to a team, but does it ever get to a point where a player is so toxic and hazardous to the team (so far that he'd go as far as punching his own teammate) that his skill is completed negated by his detriments to the team?
It would be cool to be a fly on the wall for Steph Curry's conversation with Draymond. Steph, clearly still in prime playing shape, has to be extremely irritated with the amount of distractions Draymond has caused for his team.
Right now Steph is the Warriors' only hope at any postseason play. Klay is no longer that dude. Draymond is a nut-case, and the young talent that was supposed to be promising have all been surpassed by a man mentioned earlier, Brandin Podziemski. A shooting gaurd who has carried Klay, and everyone else's slack when everyone least expected. Currently, this team will be scratching and clawing for a Play-In spot.
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