Green truth

 Some folks exist to annoy others. This is why Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors is not the most popular guy in the NBA.

Whether he's kicking dudes (OK, Steven Adams) in the manhood, playing the fly that keeps buzzing around your head or just being generally a pain in the glutes who sometimes hurts his team as much as he helps it, he's never been a fast-tracker toward Mr. Congeniality. Lots of otherwise fair-minded people can't stand the guy.

But you know what?

When he's right he's right. And the other day he was as right as a cold beer on a hot day.

In a win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, see, he noticed that the Cavs apparently told Andre Drummond right before the tip they were shipping him out of town, so they sent him back to the locker room to take off his uniform. Green did not think this was proper, and said so. More broadly, he said he was sick and tired of PLAYERS being told they're spoiled brats and locker-room cancers if they complain about their situation and ask to be traded, but no one criticizes OWNERS for doing what the Cavs did to Drummond.

That's just bidness, y'all.

"As a player you are the worst person in the world if you want a different situation, but a team can say they are trading you and that man has to stay in shape, he is to stay professional, and if not, his career is on the line," Green said.

The broader point here -- that there's a double standard in the NBA for what players can say or do in regard to a trade, and what owners can say or do -- is dead on. A James Harden can publicly state his unhappiness and agitate for a trade, and everyone hauls out the "loyalty to the team" card. As if it's seventh-grade basketball or something.

It is not, of course. It is, yes, a bidness, and in bidness there is no loyalty. The owners have never stepped foot on that road, so why should the players?

Bidness being bidness, after all, if an owner thinks you've outlived your usefulness, or your market value is slipping -- or maybe if he just doesn't like you -- he's going to mail your sorry butt to Memphis. Or Charlotte. Or Orlando.

Or, God forbid, maybe even Sacramento.

Thing is, no one's going to call out that owner on his loyalty. Even if the player he's sending to Sacramento has been with the owner's team for a good long stretch, you won't hear a peep about it. Thanks for the memories, pal. Now take a hike.

Lousy owners do this more egregiously, and clumsily, than good owners, and always have. The cheaper and greedier they are, the bigger ingrates they are. And somehow, the biggest ingrates and greedheads always turn out to be the current owners of the Blob's cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates.

Not to put my personal spin on it or anything.

In any event, here's to Draymond Green for speaking a bit of truth the other day. Hope he doesn't get fined for doing so.

Wouldn't hold my breath on that, though.