Draymond Green explains the halftime tirade he unleashed on the Warriors
Things are going pretty well for the Golden State Warriors this season. Even their hiccups go away pretty darn quickly.
Draymond Green was caught in a bit of controversy recently when he unloaded on his teammates at halftime of a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Yet the team rapidly swept any animosity under the rug, as the Warriors forward issued an apology for his testy outburst.
Whether the apology was necessary in the eyes of the Warriors is an open question, given that it was just Draymond being Draymond. For Green, though, his mea culpa was more about the tone he took than the message (via The Vertical):
“I had to apologize to my teammates, not because I said something but because of the way that I went about saying something,” Green told The Vertical. “It was wrong. And so, the fact that I had apologized to my teammates already, apologized to my coaching staff already – and yet everybody was still trying to make a big deal out of it. They were trying to make it a distraction for what we have going here. I knew it was time to shut it down. It was time to let them know, ‘Hey, it’s settled.’
“So I apologized.”
The apology was all Green's idea, although he was encouraged by Golden State GM Bob Meyers -- not because the team needed it, but because Meyers could tell that Green needed to make peace with what happened.
According to Warriors coach Steve Kerr, Green's rant would have been right at home in a Phil Jackson-coached team. Kerr, who played for Jackson for five years in Chicago, told the Vertical that the former Bulls and Lakers head coach would sometimes stir up trouble among his teams to make sure that the air was clear and no one was letting anything simmer.
Golden State should be careful, though. On Thursday night, the Warriors will put their 43-game home win streak on the line against that same Thunder team, and one assumes Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and the rest of the OKC crew will be doing everything they can to stop the pursuit of history. If you're not tuned in, then what are you even doing with your life?
