It was the kick heard ’round the world.
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At first anybody could guess why the Thunder big man was in pain, but after viewing the video replay it was clear.
Draymond Green looked to be in a tough spot, even as he maintained his innocence and confidence before a media crowd.
“There are multiple plays where I did it later in the game when I got fouled and my right leg went up”, Green said Monday. So, when you are reading the league’s statement, you believe that you are about to see the hammer drop on the Crybaby right? Perhaps it has nothing to do with a shaky Western Conference finals (so far), but Green was bad enough in Game 3 to inspire some unconventional theories. The NBA suspended Dahntay Jones on Sunday for one postseason game, a day after he kicked Raptors center Bismack Biyombo in the groin.
Instead, the National Basketball Association went a different direction.
He added that he didn’t expect to get suspended from Tuesday’s Game 4 in Oklahoma City. That upgrade puts Green on the precipice of future suspensions.
It’s hard to decipher intent. You know, I don’t think you can keep kicking somebody in their private areas. Of course, they never had to beat anyone like the Thunder in that situation. “If you watch my reaction, I walk back to the three-point line, clap everybody’s hands, turn around and look like, ‘What’s the dude on the floor for?'”
It happened in the second quarter of Golden State’s loss to OKC. They were clearly frustrated. He exaggerated his entire motion including kicking his leg out. “He just didn’t happen to catch me where I caught Steven Adams“.
This isn’t the same as Jones’ play.
With long arms and great agility, the Thunder has made Curry and Green look slow and exhausted, a bit frustrated and more than a little shellshocked. In slow-motion, the kick looks terrible, but in real-time, the contact looks incidental.
Green earned a flagrant foul for the move, and unsurprisingly his coach Steve Kerr supported the assertions that it was all an accident. It’s not like Green was falling down and his foot flailed into Adams’ weiner.
The Warriors defended Green’s knee to Adams’ midsection in Game 2 and again said Sunday’s actions were unintentional. They carry the intensity so this matchup has been a very physical and heated one.
But the league has been leery of suspending impact players ever since former commissioner David Stern changed the course of the 2007 playoffs. As basketball fans, let’s hope he isn’t.
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Love found his shooting touch after it went missing during the lost weekend in Toronto, where he went just 5 of 23 from the field and was benched for the fourth quarter of Game 4.
