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The Golden State Warriors got their season started in nearly flawless fashion, blowing out the rival Los Angeles Lakers while flexing their depth.
But it was not a great night for Warriors big man Draymond Green, who found a new way to draw some unwanted attention to himself. Green stirred some major preseason drama when he punched teammate Jordan Poole during practice, and a leaked video of the incident threw more fuel on the flames. Green ultimately took leave from the team and issued a public apology, but on Tuesday he found himself in even more hot water thanks to an in-game interaction with friend and rival LeBron James.
Green’s Puzzling Interaction With James
The Warriors weren’t tested much in their 123-109 win over the Lakers on October 18, building their lead to close to 30 points in the second half. With the lead well in hand at the end of the third quarter, Green and James shared a light moment on the court as the Warriors big man left the bench and stepped onto the court to share a joke with his friend.
Video showed Green, clad in warmups as he was in his normal third-quarter bench time, laughing at something that James told him.
lebron dont got a single joke where draymond needa be laughing like this
The video raised eyebrows among some Warriors fans, who wondered why Green would take a moment during the game to joke with an opponent.
“Nah, this is crazy,” one person tweeted.
“Draymond Green, got up off the bench, in the middle of the game, to step on the floor and crack jokes with Lebron James,” another tweeted. “He is an embarrassment. The amount of attention he needs, is sad.”
James and Green are both represented by Klutch Sports Group, and have been close friends for years. Green faced criticism in the past for the close relationship with one of the team’s biggest rivals, but said they have a good balance of friendship and competition.
“Everyone always says, ‘Oh man, why are they friends? That sucks,'” Green told ESPN’s Rachel Nichols in a 2019 interview. “[But] that’s what makes it fun for us, to be able to go out there and destroy your friend, destroy your brother. When you go in there, they’re trying to take your head off. When they come in our lane, we’re trying to take their heads off. That’s what it boils down to.”
Worry Over Fallout From Practice Punch
Some fans were worried about what message the interaction might be sending to Green’s teammates, especially after his incident with Poole earlier in the month. While both Green and Poole have publicly committed to moving on and focusing on their title defense this season, some insiders are worried that he may have caused an irreparable rift within the team.
“There is genuine concern about it around that organization, on a lot of levels, really,” one Western Conference executive told Heavy.com’s Sean Deveney. “It is hard to just pack away something like that, even for a team that has had adversity before and has kind of worked through it. But they have a lot of young guys, they have a lot of guys who Draymond has been on before, he can be hard on other players. The worry is how do they deal with that? You can wind up with a split between the young guys and the older guys in that kind of situation and that has done a lot of damage to teams in the past.”
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Warriors’ Draymond Green Roasted for Leaving Bench to Joke With LeBron