Though the Golden State Warriors defeated the Los Angeles Lakers on April 9, Draymond Green called out the NBA for what he believes is unfair treatment.
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During his postgame press conference, Green called out NBA referees for treating him differently from other players.
Draymond Green: “I hit someone in the face, I get thrown under the jail. But when I get hit in the face, they don’t see it.”
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“You can say and speak to me however you feel, but if I say something back, it’s a tech. That’s whack to me,” Green said, per Anthony Slater’s X account. “You miss a call, a guy clubbed me across the face, and then you’re like, ‘I don’t want to talk to you! Get out of my face!’ Like, who are you? You don’t just get to not talk, like you missed the call. You can’t get mad because you missed the call, so it’s a little crazy.”
Green then explained how refs treat him differently from other players regarding contact.
“I get in the face every single day, and I don’t get no foul called. I hit somebody in the face, I get thrown under the jail. But when I get hit in the face, they don’t see it. I get hit in the face every single night. I’m not sure what time it’s been called… but I put my breath on somebody, and they’ll review it for a flagrant foul.”
Klay Thompson Pleads for Draymond Green to Keep His Cool
Thompson was Green’s guest on the April 8 episode of his podcast. Green asked his teammate to give his honest thoughts about his teammate’s ejections.
“Well, please be brutally honest with me,” Green told Thompson in the “The Draymond Green Show.” “It’s gonna crush me but I need to hear it.”
Thompson obliged Green’s request.
“When you’re not out there, it’s like a piece of us is gone,” Thompson answered. “And me and Steph [Curry] are really nice guys, like probably too nice. No, and we can never be ourselves and have the freedom we do on the court without you. So when you’re not out there, it’s kind of like a huge chink in the armor. And I know the other team is very happy you’re not out there.”
He added that they can’t afford to lose Green because of what they’ve gone through together.
“It does hurt, but at the end of the day we’ve been through so many battles,” Thompson continued. “We reached the mountaintop, been down the mountain. We had to climb back and got there again. And now we have another real shot at this.”
With the win over the Lakers, the Warriors are now half a game behind the Lakers for the No. 9 seed in the Western Conference.
Warriors Don’t Know Who Leaked Video of 2022 Fight
Former Warriors GM Bob Myers admitted that he doesn’t know who leaked the video of Green punching Jordan Poole in the face in 2022.
“No [we didn’t find out who leaked],” Myers said on JJ Redick’s “The Old Man & The Three” podcast. “I think the best I can answer that is, we couldn’t pinpoint anybody. It wasn’t like we found someone. We looked, we looked. We tried, a third party, but we couldn’t.”
The Warriors never quite got it together once that incident became public. They have only since taken another step back, as they will likely fight for their playoff lives.
