Getty Draymond Green looks on during a play in a Golden State Warriors game.
The Golden State Warriors have put their messy practice scuffle in the past as they focus on the start of the season and their title defense, but one insider said there is still concern within the organization that the incident has the potential to open a long-lasting rift.
The Warriors were thrust into the preseason spotlight after veteran Draymond Green punched teammate Jordan Poole in practice, a scandal that got even more attention after a video of the incident leaked. Green ended up issuing a public apology and took a brief leave from the team, but he has returned and the Warriors are ready to open the season against the Los Angeles Lakers.
While the situation may appear to have blown over, the Warriors are still worried that some relationships could be much harder to repair.
‘Genuine Concern’ About Green-Poole Punch
Poole said he has accepted his teammate’s apology and is ready to move on, noting that everyone in the locker room is focused on the task of defending their recent NBA title.
“He apologized as a professional and we plan on handling ourselves that way,” Poole said, via SI.com. “We’re here to play basketball and everybody in the locker room and our team knows what it takes to win a championship. We’re gonna do that on the court. That’s really all I have to say regarding the matter. We’re here to win a championship and keep hanging banners.”
Draymond Green’s career has been defined by hushing his doubters and beating the odds.
We’re about to witness how he responds to his biggest test yet (via @DaltonJ_Johnson)
The Warriors will be doing just that on Tuesday, hosting the Lakers and unveiling a new banner from their win over the Boston Celtics in last season’s NBA Finals. But one Western Conference executive told Heavy.com’s Sean Deveney that moving past the ugly incident may not be so simple. It could be especially complicated if Green continues to be hard on his younger teammates, as he has throughout his career.
“There is genuine concern about it around that organization, on a lot of levels, really,” the executive said. “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.”
Leaked Video of Fight Could Be Another Sticky Issue
The executive added that there is another level of distrust within the organization now regarding the leak of the video. Before head coach Steve Kerr arrived, the Warriors had some major tensions and distrust among the coaching staff, the executive said. There is a worry that this could arise again due to the leak.
“They’ve done everything about as well as they can just trying to clean up the mess, but all of that stuff is still out there,” the executive said.
The Warriors have launched an investigation into how the video was leaked to TMZ, but have not given any public update on the findings.
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