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Golden State Warriors’ star forward Draymond Green caught the league’s attention when he ranted about how there’s a double standard in how players are treated concerning when players request a trade versus how organizations treat them while attempting to work out a trade. Following Green’s comments, Lakers’ All-Star LeBron James speaks out with his own opinion of the matter.
LeBron Agrees with Green
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In a postgame interview, James agreed with Green by saying the organizations have always “controlled the narrative” in regards to how players should act. He urged that people take a look at the other side of the situation, saying that “We just want people to understand that there are 2 sides of the coin. It’s not just one-sided.”
James said that he was “right with” Green in regards to the Golden State Warriors forward’s rant about the situation regarding Andre the Cleveland Cavaliers and Andre Drummond.
“From a team’s perspective, they control the narrative. They’ve controlled the narrative for how players should be, how they should act, how they should treat the organization,” James said. “If things don’t go their way, they have a way of getting out the narrative that this person or that person is a bad fit or a cancer to the team.”
Green’s rant was in response to the Cleveland Cavaliers announcing that they would sit out center Andre Drummond as they continued to work out a trade. The Detroit Pistons are also doing the same with forward Blake Griffin.
These two trade situations are considered minuscule compared to the coverage of Brooklyn Nets’ James Harden as he requested to be traded from the Houston Rockets.
In his notable interview, Green notably said that “Everyone wants to say, ‘that young man can’t figure it out.’ But no one wants to say the organization can’t figure it out,” bringing notice to the fact that the blame for bad team chemistry between a team and player can’t always fall on the players.
Where They’re Coming From
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James and Green are alluding that in the eyes of the public, when a player requests a trade it is considered as “unprofessional” versus it being viewed as “strictly business” as it is perceived when an organization does the same thing.
“Loyalty” in the eyes of the NBA works both ways. Organizations cannot expect players to stay loyal to their teams during free agency, then on the other side state that “it’s just business” if the team decides to trade them in the middle of their contract. That’s ultimately what Green and James are speaking out on. They believe that Drummond has every right to be upset with the Cavaliers, and what Green and James are wanting people to notice is the double standard behind this. Even if it doesn’t lead to the result that they are yearning for.
Both Green and James do have a valid point, due to the fact that teams can work endlessly behind the scenes to get out of a bad contract, however, the face of this bad contract seems to receive more criticism when they try to get out of the contract.
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