Draymond Green and Charles Barkley may have started seeing eye to eye after sharing the TNT studio, but the duo have a colorful beef history.
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Draymond Green is among the most polarizing players in the NBA today. He’s commonly been considered the best defender in the NBA for over 6 years now.
Draymond has also earned a reputation for his high basketball IQ and his ability to foresee plays before they unravel. However, his dirty play, as well as his unsavory and at times, arrogant comments serve to turn tons of fans against him.
Nevertheless, Green is an integral part of the most successful NBA team over the past decade. For that reason alone, he deserves a platform to be able to present his thoughts.
However, the 2016-17 NBA Defensive Player of the Year also has a tendency to take himself and his role as a model NBA player in society too seriously.
Draymond Green compared James Dolan to plantation slave owners while commenting on the Charles Oakley feud
Draymond Green has accumulated a few highly questionable comments – his thoughts on the Wiggins vaccination not least among those. Another instance of his thoughtless comments came when he voiced his own opinion on his own Dray Day podcast in 2017.
This was a time when Jim Dolan was under fire for banning former Knicks player and legend Charles Oakley from Madison Square Garden. This treatment earned Dolan universal flak, and Green seemed eager to join in on that bandwagon. He went a bit too far when he said:
“You’re doing it for me, it’s all good. But now you’re doing it against me, or you’re speaking out against my organization, it’s not good anymore?”
“That’s a slave mentality — slave master mentality. That’s ridiculous. It was all fine and dandy when he was laying people out, taking fines and all this stuff for your organization. But now all of a sudden when he says something that he feels, it’s a problem.”
Also Read – How do NBA Teams Make Money: A Complete NBA Revenue Breakdown.
Charles Barkley chastised Draymond following his insensitive analogy
Charles Barkley was already incensed by the Warriors’ 3-pointer heavy offense and their superteaming tendencies by that point. His exasperation knew no bounds after hearing Draymond’s tone-deaf comparison of the Charles Oakley situation to slave ownership.
“That is just stupid,” Barkley said on an Atlanta sports-radio show. “I don’t think you ever use basketball analogies to compare to slavery when guys are making 20, 30 million dollars a year. I just think that’s just stupid.”