Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Anger mismanagement

 Draymond Green got thrown out of another NBA game last night, this time for backhanding Jusuf Nurkic of the Phoenix Suns in the head. And now I don't know what you do if you're Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr.

On the one hand, he's not wrong when he says Green's a valuable piece of the Warriors' game, and they need him. He's also not wrong when he says Green needs to learn to "keep his poise and be out there for his teammates."

On the other hand ...

When does it become obvious he's simply incapable of doing that? 

And how long has it been obvious already?

No, I don't know what you do if you're Steve Kerr, but maybe we're edging toward the nuclear option. As in, trade the guy for whatever you can get and move on -- even though Draymond was an unrestricted free agent this past summer and the rumors of him moving on were flying, only to come to naught.

Anyway, it's not as if Draymond doesn't have some miles on him. He's now 33 years old. This is his 12th NBA season. Although there's as yet been little falloff in his production, the law of diminishing returns is surely waiting just offstage.

Especially when the Warriors can't depend on the guy to keep himself on the floor.

Now, Green did apologize for what happened last night, saying he tries to sell fouls by waving his arms around and just happened to catch Nurkic in the noggin. This sounded reasonable, sort of. Draymond always sounds reasonable when the dust settles. That's because he's an intelligent man, except on those occasions when he loses his freaking mind.

And there have simply been too many of those occasions. So what do you do, if you're Steve Kerr? And when are Steph Curry and the rest of the Warriors vets going to step up and publicly demand some accountability from Draymond?

Maybe they've already done that in private, I don't know. Maybe they told him to check his s***, and he got all mad and told them to check their s***, and it blew up into one of those locker room kerfuffles teams like the Warriors are adept at keeping quiet. I mean, Draymond decked teammate Jordan Poole right out in the open in practice once. Who knows what he does behind closed doors?

"Perhaps some anger management therapy might be in order, Mr. Blob," you're saying now.

Yes. And I can just see how that would go.

"Mr. Green, tell us what goes through your mind when you become angry on the basketball cou-"

BLAM!

"Oops, sorry, Doc. I didn't mean to elbow you in the head. I was just stretching and your head accidentally got in the way ..."

Ay-yi-yi.

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