USA TODAY SPORTS
When Cops Nearly Had To Stop Draymond Green From Fighting Steve Kerr: “Motherf**ker, come sit me down!”
From the outside, the Warriors seemed to have a good team chemistry over the last two years – which should be obvious, after winning a title one year and breaking the regular season record for most wins the year after. But more and more people say the opposite – mainly because of one guy – Draymond Green. Steve Kerr apparently has a strain relationship with Draymond Green, that already started to go down the hill after the title-winning 2015 campaign. While on the podium, during the championship festivities, Draymond addressed the crowd in a very controversial way, saying:
“With these guys, everything’s fun. The only time it’s not fun is practice, film, games, bus rides. I’m the only person that gets talked about what shots I take and all those things by Steve Kerr. Like, every time I take a shot, he complains. So that’s why, if you see, every time I make a shot, I look at him. Dude complain every time I take a shot.”
To which Steve Kerr responded: “Twenty-four percent!” – Green’s 3-point shooting percentage during the final three rounds of the playoffs.
Green continued:
“This my guy,” Draymond starts, prompting Kerr to pat his chest. “From the start of training camp, he hated me. That’s no lie. He probably still hates me. That’s no lie.”
Draymond might be right. Steve Kerr once said: “We have a very likable group of guys — other than Draymond.” – He said it with a smile, but there could have been a lot of truth behind these words.
But it seems that not only coach Kerr has problems with Draymond Green, but also various players on the team. Former Warriors player Marreese Speights said:
“Draymond f**ked up practice and s**t, Draymond’s a good guy, but I think at the end of the day, it hurt the whole chemistry of the year. Draymond and Klay got into it a lot.”
There are plenty of interesting and almost unbelievable scenes out of the Warriors locker room described in this ESPN article this all is about and started the whole Draymond Green debate, but this next section might be the craziest one, it left me speechless.
On February 27th, 2016 in Oklahoma City, during halftime of a nationally televised game, Green is losing his holy mind. Inside the visitors locker room, he’s hollering “I am not a robot!” at Kerr. When Kerr tells him to sit down, Green screams, “Motherf—er, come sit me down!” When he goes after Kerr, his teammates, including Curry and Thompson, step in to stave off disaster.
Minutes later, in her report following halftime, ESPN sideline reporter Lisa Salters will recite a portion of Green’s explosion: “I am not a robot! I know I can play! You have me messed up right now! If you don’t want me to shoot, I won’t shoot the rest of the game!”
“I’m standing outside the locker room with the Oklahoma City police, which are always stationed outside of every locker room,” Salters will later recall. “They kind of moved me aside, and the officer just kind of stood by the door, with his hand on his weapon like he was trying to determine what he should do. It was clear that something bad was about to happen in this locker room. We’ve never heard anything like this before.”
We can never judge if something is true or if it was taken out of context just based on hearsay. But where there’s smoke, there mostly is a fire and even if this was taken out of context, the words, spoken by Draymond, were harmful not only to his coach, but to his whole team. It also is fitting that Green was arrested for assault this past summer,
It seems to be hard to find a balance with the hot-headed power forward, according to coach Kerr approvingly:
“You have to find the edge, you find the balance. About two years ago, Draymond was good. This last year, a couple of times he went over the brink. That’s the challenge.”
