Draymond Green picked up his fourth ejection of the season in the game against the Magic. Even though the Warriors won the game 101-93, Green’s action and his overall intent for the team’s objective for the season is now being questioned. Recently, Keyshawn Johnson on the UNDISPUTED show alongside Skip Bayless discussed Green’s recent ejection and said that it might be time for the Warriors to look past him.
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This being the fourth ejection for Green in this season has put him in a tough spot. Over the last few months, he has lost several games, money because of his penalties and his overall reputation as a dependable player has also taken a massive hit. However, nothing seems to faze Green at the moment despite all of the things that he has been through. Johnson said that Green needs to understand that he is hurting his own team and that his actions are messing up their chances of finding any kind of success this season.
He said, “He is what he is. I don’t want the edge taken away from him, but what I want him to do is dial it back and understand you’re literally hurting us. If Steph Curry doesn’t go bananas, so to speak, they lose.”
Johnson said that the team looks extremely disfigured at the moment and even Stephen Curry‘s attempts might not be enough to pull them back all the time. So, according to the NFL legend, the Warriors need to take a good hard look into Green and his future with the franchise, because if he keeps continuing like this, he’ll end up becoming a bigger liability. And given everything that the star has been doing over the course of the last year, it’s very hard to disagree with the analyst.
Gilbert Arenas defends Draymond Green
The first course of action when something like this happens is to blame the player. However, fans should also focus on the recent trend in the league where there is absolutely no tolerance in the refs regarding athlete’s emotions on the court. The league has reached a point where players have been ejected for stare downs. Fortunately, there are former players like Gilbert Arenas who understand that it is not always the player who is at fault.
On the recent episode of Nightcap with Shannon Sharpe, Arenas said that he backed Green despite the ejection. According to the former Wizards star, the Warriors man was not in the wrong this time and his ejection has more to do with the poor state of refereeing in the league. He said, “This one I don’t put on him. I put it more on the ref. He has nothing to do with this play.” Arenas stated that the ref taking things personally led to this situation.
While there can be occasions where Green’s emotions get the best of him, it is also true that officials don’t provide players with nearly enough emotional leeway to players anymore. That said, on this occasion, there was no doubt that Green went excessively far with his actions. And so, he very much deserved to be ejected.
