NBA’s Suspension of Draymond Green Is an Outrageous Overreaction

He is being unfairly punished for his response to Domantas Sabonis’s grabbing ahold of his leg in Game 2.

The tweet from the NBA communications handle hit just before midnight.

Draymond Green suspended.

I had to check twice to make sure it wasn’t a fake account.

Suspended? Green’s actions late in Game 2 of Sacramento’s win over Golden State was the talk of radio, TV and podcasts on Tuesday. His response to his ankle being wrapped up by Kings center Domantas Sabonis—a stomp to Sabonis’s midsection followed by a Super Mario–like leap off his stomach—earned him an ejection. Even that was questionable. A suspension is worse.

Suspended? Really? What a relief Sabonis survived the ordeal. After instigating the incident by gripping onto Green while he attempted to take off in transition, Sabonis—a 7'1", 240-pound mountain of a man—writhed on the floor. Oscar De La Hoya looked less pained after a liver shot from Bernard Hopkins. Trevor Berbick got up quicker against Mike Tyson. After the game, ESPN reported Sabonis would get an X-ray to check for broken ribs. On Wednesday, the Kings listed Sabonis as questionable for Game 3 with a “sternum contusion.” No word on whether there was an MRI to suss out any internal injuries.

Green was incredulous he was even assessed a foul in the immediate aftermath of his entanglement with Sabonis :: Randall Benton/AP

Suspended? I mean come on, NBA. In announcing the suspension, Joe Dumars—the ex–Bad Boy turned NBA top cop—said the decision “was based in part on Green’s history of unsportsmanlike acts.” The shot to the groin of Steven Adams in 2016. The shot to the groin of LeBron James ... weeks later in ’16. The elbow to the throat of James Harden two years later. Not to mention the altercations he has had with teammates (Kevin Durant, Jordan Poole) that have led to in-house punishment. For years Green has collected technical fouls as easily as rebounds, which has earned the ire of the decision-makers in Olympic Tower.

But suspended? Give me a break.

Green’s reaction was wrong. Sabonis went dirty, and Green responded in kind. With the benefit of limitless replay, it’s easy to say Green should have wriggled free or even fell down, which if called a technical foul would have earned Golden State at least one free throw and the ball. But in the heat of the moment, 40-some odd minutes into an up-and-down, physical game, reacting the way Green did could be forgiven. Or at least not excessively punished.

“I’d do the same thing,” Shaquille O’Neal said on TNT. “I really would. Don’t be grabbing me. Like, if I stay there and just try to run forward, I’ll fall. You gotta get him up off you. And if you get him up off you and you’re in the way, you might get stomped on. Was it a dirty play? Of course it was a dirty play. [But] if you don’t grab me, this won’t happen.”

“What Sabonis did was wrong,” Richard Jefferson said on ESPN. “I would have kicked him. I don’t know if I would have stomped on him. But I’ve got to get going. This is the postseason. Sabonis knew what he was doing.”

The NBA is proactive in situations like this. Understandably. The league doesn’t want to go back to the days of Kevin McHale’s clotheslining Bill Laimbeer or Larry Bird’s taking a swing at Dr. J. The possibility of another Malice in the Palace sends shivers up its collective spine. Green is this generation’s Metta Sandiford-Artest, wildly unpredictable and requiring special policing.

But this is too much. Golden State already paid a steep price losing Green for the final seven minutes in Game 2. Now it will have to pay another. The team is down 2–0 and facing a way better than expected Kings team brimming with confidence. And the Warriors will have to do it without their best defender. The NBA could have ended this story Wednesday. Instead it has made it bigger. And worse.