Getty Danny Green of the Sixers, right
When it comes to Sixers forward Danny Green, it seems Warriors fans just can’t forgive or forget. It was Green, of course, who in the 2019 NBA Finals committed the foul on Golden State star Klay Thompson that caused Thompson to land awkwardly on his right leg and tear his ACL.
Thompson spent more than a year recovering from that injury, and then, in November of 2020, suffered a devastating torn Achilles tendon in the same leg, meaning he has not played in more than two years.
Klay landed awkwardly on the left leg
And Green knows well that a wide swath of Warriors fans hold him responsible for the time Thompson has missed.
“I am going up there and making clean attempts on these plays,” Green said on a recent episode of his podcast, Inside the Green Room. “They called a foul but to me, these are very fair, up-in-the-air plays and a lot of them that I think I’m catching cleanly, and I’m not trying to injure anybody. Yes, Klay being hurt since that time, it’s been my fault, back-to-back times he’s been injured, regardless of when it happened, where it happened, after that incident. Him missing two years is Danny Green’s fault according to the Warriors fans. And they all hate me for it.”
Green Committed Similar Foul on Jordan Poole
The impetus for bringing back the Warrior-fan hate was a play during the Sixers’ win over Golden State in Philadelphia on December 11. During the game, there was a play in which Warriors wing Jordan Poole—who has been starting in Thompson’s place this season—drove to the basket on a fastbreak and was fouled by Green in a very similar play to the one that injured Thompson.
Warriors writer Joe Viray tweeted, “Danny Green going for that block on Poole probably just triggered a whole lot of emotions among the Warriors fan base.”
When co-host Harrison Sanford read the tweet to Green, he said, “Yes, he is correct. I did get a lot of—I’m not going to say a lot of—I got a couple of little hate-tweets, little hate-mail, you know, ‘I wish your Achilles blows out, you should have went for the block instead of cutting people out, you’re a dirty player.’ These are clean blocks, man.”
Warriors Nearly Traded for Green Last Year
In a bit of side-note fun, there was talk around last year’s NBA trade deadline that the Warriors nearly traded for Danny Green, though no deal came through. Interesting to consider how Golden State fans would have felt about Green in a The City uniform.
Off the rebound, Steph makes a sensational bounce pass to the streaking Jordan Poole in transition, who manages to draw the foul on Danny Green. Upon further review, it should have been a block, much to Philly’s dismay
In the wake of the Thompson 2019 injury, Green did say that other members of the Warriors approached him and assured him that they knew the play was clean.
“The rest of his guys, they were making sure that I didn’t take it the wrong way or feel too bad or guilty about it,” Green said at the time. “It was a clean play. They were like, ‘We know you’re not dirty.’ Draymond [Green], Iggy [Andre Iguodala] they were like, ‘Yeah, you went up for the ball. He just came down funny. It’s not your fault. Don’t even worry about it.’”
But, as Green said, the sentiment among Warriors fans is different, and bubbled back up after the Poole foul:
That’s pretty much the tweets and mail I’ve been getting from that day, and from when Klay was hurt. Yeah, I guess they didn’t like the fact that Jordan Poole went down a little bit. He was in good spirits, he was a good fan about it. He said, ‘I didn’t know you were still going to try to block it, I didn’t know you could still get up there like that, OG.’ I said, ‘I don’t give up any easy, free layups.’ So, he was like, ‘If I’d have known, I would have tried to dunk the ball a little bit harder.’ I was like, ‘Maybe, but just know I’m coming, man.’ It was all fun and games. He’s a good young player, good young kid. Up-and-coming, a lot of potential.
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Sixers’ Danny Green Still Feels One Fan Base’s Wrath: ‘They All Hate Me’