Draymond Green is not happy that the NBA postponed the Golden State Warriors‘ game against Denver on Thursday after the Nuggets were left without enough players to field a team.
The Nuggets have been hit hard by infections this week, with head coach Michael Malone entering the league’s health and safety protocol on Thursday along with two assistant coaches, ESPN reported. The Nuggets already had four players listed as questionable for the game — Monte Morris, Aaron Gordon, Austin Rivers, and Vlatko Cancar — and added another three players to health and safety protocols on Thursday, the report noted. Forwards Jeff Green and Zeke Nnaji and guard Bones Hyland entered protocols, leaving Denver without the eight players necessary to move forward with the game.
Green said it’s a situation that now puts his team at a disadvantage.
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Green Sounds Off
After the cancelation was announced, Green took to Twitter to vent his frustrations with the league’s decision, especially after the Warriors were forced to play shorthanded against the Nuggets on Tuesday. The Warriors lost that game 89-86, falling in the final minute despite a furious comeback to erase a 24-point deficit.
“How do you continue to cancel games when you’ve implemented rules to prevent this from happening? Is that not a competitive advantage for other teams?” Green tweeted. “The guys we didn’t have due to the protocol list played no role in Tuesdays loss? Pick a side but don’t straddle the fence.”
Draymond sounded off after Thursday’s Warriors-Nuggets game was postponed last minute.
Green added that the league’s decision put the Warriors at a disadvantage, both in the game earlier this week and whenever the teams are able to make up Thursday’s contest.
“So when the game is rescheduled(which will probably take a day away from our ‘break’), we wil play them at full strength… But they got to sneak a win when we weren’t at full strength, only two days ago???” Green tweeted. “Let’s make it make some sense here.”
Warriors Hit Hard
The Warriors have been playing through plenty of adversity in the past week, dealing with their own spate of injuries and infections that included Green heading into the health and safety protocol on December 27. Despite missing a number of key players, the Warriors were able to notch a 116-109 win over the Phoenix Suns on Christmas. The Warriors were missing three of their top scorers in Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole, and Damion Lee, and had four assistant coaches out.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said it was a difficult situation.
“Missing all those guys was really bizarre,” Kerr said, via ESPN. “The group did a really good job. These are strange times for a lot of reasons, but I’ve never seen four coaches out at the same time.”
The #Nuggets didn’t have any new positive cases when the decision was made to postpone, but it would’ve required one or two of their questionable players (Gordon, Morris, Cancar, Rivers) to play. Gordon, Morris and Cancar all missed Tuesday’s game vs. GSW.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league had been prepared for the possibility of disruptions this season, and has now postponed 11 games.
“As we look through these cases literally ripping through the country right now, putting aside the rest of the world, I think we’re finding ourselves where we sort of knew we were going to get to for the past several months, and that is that this virus will not be eradicated and we’re going to have to learn to live with it,” Silver said. “That’s what we’re experiencing in the league right now.”
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Warriors’ Draymond Green Blasts NBA for Postponing GS Game