Draymond Green is never one to keep his feelings in check, be it on the court or off the court, and that passionate trait was on full display following the Warriors' Monday night game.
The Warriors defeated the Cavaliers 129-98, but that was of secondary importance to a much greater point that Green wanted to get off his chest. Perhaps the game would have been closer had Cavs big man Andre Drummond, who is in the middle of a volatile trade/buyout situation, been a part of Cleveland's game plan.
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But instead, Drummond sat on the bench, and Green took exception to this in the grand scheme of how the league tends to operate in these situations.
"To watch Andre Drummond before the game sit on the sideline, then go to the back and then come out in street clothes because a team is going to trade him is bullsh--," Green said to begin a long and impassioned statement. "Because when James Harden asked for a trade and essentially dogged it — no one's going to fight back that James was dogging it his last days in Houston — but he was castrated for wanting to go to a different team and everybody destroyed that man.
"And yet a team can come out and say, oh, we want to trade a guy, and that guy is to go sit, and if he doesn't stay professional then he's a cancer and he's not good in someone's locker room and he's the issue."
Green cited other examples of players getting traded in ways that disrespected them as professionals, including when Harrison Barnes was made aware in the middle of a game that he had been traded.
"But I got fined for stating my opinion on what should happen with another player, but teams can come out and continue to say, oh, we're trading guys, we're not playing you," Green continued, "and yet we're to stay professional. At some point, as players, we need to be treated with the same respect and have the same rights that the teams can have, because as a player, you're the worst person in the world when you want a different situation.
"But a team can say they're trading you, and that man is to stay in shape, he is to stay professional, and if not, his career is on the line. At some point, this league has to protect the players from embarrassment."
This seems like one rant that won't result in a fine. Instead, it could do the NBA a lot of good to reconsider how their players are treated.
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