Dillon Brooks suspension, Ja Morant vs. Steph Curry, Warriors-Grizzlies Game 2 | Draymond Green Show

What's up everybody? It's Draymond Green. Make sure you subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel below so you don't miss any more of this great content going forward. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Draymond Green Show. We are recording this Thursday morning. I've had a little time to think about everything that happened as well as the other Game 2s. So let's, well, before we get into that, I know we've discussed on this podcast before about Hazel saying, I don't have a hat on and have my hair cut. So I wanna explain to you my last 36 to 48 hours and why I have a hat on. So yesterday we got back at 4:30 in the morning. My daughter needed to go to school, but the rest of my morning was filled with going to see plastic surgeon to get more stitches in the side of my eye. And I could not get a haircut because I also, while seeing a plastic surgeon, then I also had to see an ophthalmologist and get the inside of my eyeball checked for bleeding and all of these other things. So you can imagine how my yesterday was. So Brownie Blends could not come touch up the hair. So that's rough. And the hat helps my eye looks a little smaller than what it actually is. And so it's like compressing down and it's not giving you the full picture of how bad I look. Although I look terrible right here, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination I actually look okay here, but it's a little worse without the hat. So bear with me this episode. I hope you all understand why I have this hat on, why everything is kind of looking a little— ah, but that's that. That's my appearance. This is— you're not really here to see my pretty face, are you?

No.

No, I think you're here to talk and let's talk about some games and let's talk about the world of basketball. So let's get into it. The Warriors lose game 2, 106 to 101. Let's, let's dive into that one. Ja Morant was absolutely incredible, which you'd expect. You know, I've spoken about Ja for a couple years now and the type of player that I think he's becoming. And so, When you speak of going into an opponent's arena ahead 1-0 with the possibility of going up 2-0 headed back home, you expect everything. You expect desperation, which is what they play with, which explains the Dylan Brooks foul to me. And we'll talk about more, but more importantly than the Dylan Brooks foul, What it explains is Ja Morant and the passion and tenacity and the ferociousness and aggressiveness that he played game 2 with. And he ended up with 47, 8 and 8. Now the reason I say that is because, like I said, I've, even with the MIP conversation, as you can see LeBron tweeted the other day, like, and this is why, Ja Morant is way too special to even be in an MIP situation because guess what? Ja Morant would be in a situation like that last year and possibly give you that, give you that same game. And so that was kind of the whole thing about the MIP conversation. But like I said, when, when, when, what, what explains Ja Morant's game to me better than anything is the desperation that he played with. The desperation to not allow my team to go down 0-2 headed out on the road. And so what did he do? He did everything. He made threes, he got to the basket, he had 15 straight points in the fourth quarter. He did everything that they needed him to do to win the game. Now in saying that, and with him doing everything, us, the Golden State Warriors, I'm looking at this like he did do everything. He did make every play. Couple bounces here and there, a couple fouls on myself that I have to be better with down the stretch. and it was a 102 to 101 game with an, with still an opportunity to win the game. So I feel very good about that as an opponent knowing that there are some things that we can clean up. One being turnovers. We had nearly 20 turnovers, which you turn the ball over that many times against any team, you put yourself in a dangerous situation. You turn that ball over that many times against a young Memphis Grizzlies, probably the most athletic team in the playoffs still playing, you're really with one of the most athletic point guards to ever play, you really gonna be in trouble. And so when I look at that, I say, man, in spite of having nearly 20 turnovers, in spite of all the things that transpired in the beginning of the game, in spite of Ja Morant having 47, 8 and 8, we still had it under 1 minute, 1 possession game. We come up with a rebound, we go down to score and maybe everything, we're talking everything, there's a totally different tune now. The series is in a totally different place. But in saying that, the series is 1 to 1, headed back home. When you go on the road, I've said this before, you wanna go win 1 game. You wanna take home court advantage. Did we try to get greedy? Yes, we failed. But— We did what we had to do and that's go out and win one game. And so the position we're in is pretty good, you know, coming back home. Ja Morant, some of the finishes that he had in that game, I saw some of the comparisons to Air Jordan. I mean, it was absolutely incredible. The one where I came help side and jumped and went vertical and he did whatever he did in the air and went underneath. I mean, that was just one of the incredible finishes. It was absolutely insane. I'm going back looking at that like, man, like you gotta, you just gotta take your hat off to him. He made some incredible plays. I think for us, I think we also had a bunch of shot turnovers, which is something we talk about, which are bad shots that we take that leads to transition runouts. I think we had quite a few of those. And so when you look at, we nearly had 20 actual turnovers, probably 20 shot turnovers. That's absolutely hard to overcome. And like I said, yet we're still sitting there with a chance to win the game. You know, when you look at a guy like Zaire Williamson, you gotta take your hat off to the rookie. He hit, was 4 for 8 from 3 for 15 points. Now, they were big threes. They weren't like, just a 3 here, a 3 there. He hit timely big 3s. And again, when you're going on the road, those are the things that you have to take out. Now, in saying that, we were 7 for 38 from 3. A lot of 3s that, you know, I think we make on a normal basis. When you look at some of our shot turnovers that we had, you have to ask yourself, Number one, when you're getting those open threes, if you don't get into a rhythm, which I don't think we did, if you don't get into a rhythm, then once you do get those open threes, they're not so open because the rhythm isn't there. And so you have to give the Memphis Grizzlies defense credit. I think they did a good job of defending, but I also think some of that falls on us as well and some things that we can correct. By the way, I actually don't have my ring light today either because I don't want my face lit up. So I hope you all understand that as well. But I just had to say that because I see my video and I'm like, oh, I'm a little dark. That's intentional, just so you know, hiding all of this. But, and moving forward, the Dylan Brooks file, when I say that— Explain. Their desperation explains the Dylan Brooks foul. It explains Ja Morant. When I say that explains the Dylan Brooks foul, to me, you're starting off game 2. I'm not one to get off into the, oh, is he dirty? Is he not? That's for you to make your own decision. I really don't care whether someone wants to classify him as dirty, whether you think it was dirty, whether you think it's not. The moral, I mean, the— The moral of the story is— The reality is it happened. Like the play happened. Gary Payton is hurt. That's my only concern. I can really care less about is Dylan Brooks dirty? Was it intentional? Was it not? That's small. That's low-hanging fruit. That's beside the point. Like Gary Payton is hurt. That's my concern. That's where it begins and that's where it ends. I don't get off into the, oh, it was a dirty play. Like after the game I say, yeah, it was a— BS play. I think it was a BS play. But to get off into, is Dylan Brooks a dirty player or not? That ain't a lane that I live in. I let the talking heads live in that lane. I let them debate it. I don't get off into that lane. What the lane that I get off into is how do I make this right? How do we, what do I have to do in order to overcome the loss of Gary Payton II? You know, and that's kind of as far as it goes. But the desperation, you know, you're starting off a game, you're trying to set a tone. It was evident to me that they were there to set a tone. So you can say, was it a mistake, was it not? Like I said, I don't get off into that. You can say, was the elbow a mistake or was it not? Like I said, I don't get off into that. What was evident to me was that they were there to set a tone. So whether you did those things on purpose or not, maybe yes, the elbow wasn't intentional. Maybe, oh man, the foul wasn't to intentionally hurt him. But what was intentional was they were coming out to set a tone, as you have to do down 1-0. On your home court going into game 2. You have to come out and set a tone. If you look at all the press clippings and, you know, the things that they put out, it was— we knew they were coming out to set a tone. They talked about how we had run the rebounding battle and they weren't as physical as they normally were. So you knew that they were coming out to set that tone, just like I knew they were coming out to set the tone. So that's why to me, whether the things were intentional or not really doesn't matter. Yeah. What was evident was they were coming out to set a tone, and as their opponent, you gotta take that on the chin. You gotta take that here. You gotta, you know, you gotta take that how it comes. And so for me, it's like, okay, they came out and set the tone that they wanted to set. Give them credit. I'll give them credit. Like, some fans may be upset. Give them credit. They set the tone that they want to set. You knew right away first 3 or 4 minutes of that game, the type of game that that was gonna be. Whether you were opponent, whether you were a fan, you knew what type of game that was gonna be. And so for me, that's kind of all that really matters. You know, the eye, the elbow, the cameraman bleeding. I don't know if people saw that on TV, but like right after I went out, the cameraman on the baseline then bleeding. And so again, that was all a part of it.

Yeah.

The gym was cracking now. The arena was cracking. It was a fun arena to play in. I mean, it was exciting. And game 5 is gonna be even more cracking. But like, it was cracking in there. And it immediately took on the same vibe that the players had on the court that the game kind of was taking on. It immediately took on that same vibe. Like I said, you gotta give them credit. They came out, they set the tone that they wanted to set. Let's not get off into, oh man, he did that on purpose. He elbowed him on purpose. They said they were coming out to set a tone. As a very young team, they set the tone they wanted to set. Now it's on us to respond. It's on us to reach that level of physicality and exceed it. That's what you have to do. That's a playoff series. Playoffs get physical like that. Playoffs get chippy. So I've been in enough of these series to know that's all a part of it. I don't get caught up in it. And moving forward, let's talk about the way I was booed on my way out. You probably seen my press conference by now where I said, listen, they booed me. I think it's very distasteful to boo anyone after they have an injury. I saw some of that, or we saw some of that when Kevin Durant tore his Achilles in Toronto. And fans cheered when he went down. I think that's one of the most distasteful things that, that takes, can take place in sports. Why? As I spoke about before, when you leave the basketball court, any injury that you sustain on the basketball court, that injury does not go away when you walk off that basketball court. It's not like, hey man, I go on a basketball court and anything that happens to me there, once I walk off that court, I'm fine. You know, if I get an elbow to the eye and my eye is swollen on the court, when I leave that court, it doesn't stay there. Like you live those things every single day of your life. And so when Toronto fans boo Kevin Durant or cheer Kevin Durant, cheer when he injures himself, that's so distasteful that, A, Affects how he feeds his family. B, he has to now rehab that for a year. He has to go under a knife, which is life-threatening. You have to do all of these things. You don't just leave that injury on the court. And so it's so distasteful because contrary to popular belief, we are actually human beings. And you actually feel that pain when you leave that basketball court. And when you leave that gym, you actually can't go home and possibly play with your kids or, you know, you can't go on and, you know, do the necessary things or on about your normal life like you normally do. And so it's such a distasteful thing because you're a fan of a basketball game. Or a basketball team. Be a fan of a basketball team, but understand that there are actually human beings that you're watching. And sometimes it's, you need to learn how to step outside of, "Oh man, I'm cheering for this team and this happened and that helps my team." No, no, no. Because if somebody come in your job and slap you in the face or kick you in the face or elbow you in the face, or harm you in any way, and other people there laughed at you, you'd feel a way. Now, when I say feel a way, it's not that, it's not that my feelings are hurt per se, because again, I did what I wanted to do. And like I said, it felt very good to do as I did it. I mean, it may have felt too good. I must be honest with you. I enjoy every moment of that, every second of that moment, I enjoyed it. So don't feel bad for me. I got off what I wanted to get off. And like I said, it was worth every penny. See, what you don't understand is when you get ejected from games, you get a fine. I didn't get my money's worth on that fine, but I got my money's worth on whatever fine is coming my way.

Nah.

Immediately in that moment I said, "All right, I'm either about to flip them off or I'm not." And there's been this clip coming to my Instagram and coming to my Twitter of myself and Maverick Carter. This was in the very early, early days. If I'm not mistaken, it was the very first episode of of Spring Hill/Uninterrupted hosted by Maverick Carter's show, Chasing Dough, Kneading Dough, I'm sorry, Kneading Dough. And when I did that, A, it was probably 6 or 7 years ago, but B, $20,000 is still $20,000. What I'm telling you is I justified in my mind that it was worth whatever price that I was going to pay at that point. $20,000 is still $20,000, which is why you also see I said I'm going to go do an appearance and make that money up because I still want my $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. I don't know if I'll get fined. I think Kyrie Irving may have gotten fined $50,000. There were multiple, there were multiple instances there. I had one, so I don't know if I'll get fined that, but again, this is me you're talking about, so I probably will. Maybe it'll exceed that. But the moral of that story is I got my money's worth. And so when you're sending me the clip that says, oh, when it says me saying $20,000 is still $20,000. No, that's a fact. $20,000 is still $20,000. But in that moment, I was totally fine. And I'm still totally fine with whatever dollar amount I have to pay. Because it brought me great joy to give them, the fans in Memphis, exactly what they deserve, that you're going to cheer or boo or something when someone gets hurt. It's just distasteful. And there's no place in sports for that. There's no place in sports for it. So they are who they are. Maybe they'll do it again.

Um.

And in that moment, I'll decide what I'm gonna do. But in that very moment that happened, I made that decision. I live with that. I stand on that. We move forward. It is what it is. The boos will be louder in Game 5. Kudos. Let's get it.

Before we go to the next series, we have our first ever mid-pod breaking news. What Adrian Wojnarowski says that Dylan Brooks is gonna be suspended for the next game. Your thoughts?

Dylan Brooks is gonna be suspended next game. Wow, that just happened right away. Breaking news, that is interesting. You get my live reaction. I mean, again, what's the debate if he should have been suspended 2 games or blah, blah, blah? I think it's legit. You know, you get thrown out for a flag or 2. And as I've said, clearly, intent doesn't matter anymore. Whether he was intentional or not doesn't really matter to me. But the reality is Gary Payton II is out for an extended period of time. It was a nasty fall, defenseless player. I get it. He's suspended for one extra game. Kudos to them. Doesn't change our method of attack. We still gotta do the same thing. You know, we'll see how the fans feel about it. Do they think it was enough? Was it not enough? I respect the accountability from the NBA. You gotta hold guys accountable. I've been held accountable. I always respect the accountability. So we'll see. I mean, you know, he's ejected for the next game. Still a tough game for us. As you can see, he was ejected pretty much the whole game last game we lost.

So.

Yeah. It's low-hanging fruit for me.