SI:AM | Draymond Green Did It Again

Plus, our latest NBA power rankings.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I can’t say I was shocked to wake up this morning and see what Draymond Green had done.

In today’s SI:AM:

🤦‍♂️ Draymond ejected again

🤕 Justin Herbert’s injury

📊 NBA power rankings

Another suspension is coming

Draymond Green is once again in the spotlight for a reckless instance of on-court violence.

In the third quarter of last night’s game against the Suns, Green and Jusuf Nurkić were jockeying for position on an inbounds play when Green spun around wildly and smacked Nurkić across the face. (You can watch the video of the incident here.) After a review, Green was assessed a flagrant 2 foul and ejected from the game. Without Green, the Suns went on to win, 119–116.

It’s the third time this season that Green has been ejected from a game. His first ejection came Nov. 11 after he was issued two technical fouls in a game against the Cavaliers. He also got tossed for putting the Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert in a choke hold on Nov. 14, leading to a five-game suspension.

The incident with Gobert was at least somewhat understandable because it came during a skirmish involving other players. Klay Thompson was scrapping with Minnesota’s Jaden McDaniels when Gobert attempted to separate them, at which point Green entered the fray to go after Gobert. Green was targeting Gobert, who was trying to play the role of peacemaker, and grabbing his neck was unnecessary, but he didn’t start the fight. Last night’s incident was completely unprompted, though. It was a normal basketball play when Green turned violent for no apparent reason. There was no legitimate reason for Green to whirl around with his arm extended like that. The only rational explanation is that he was trying to hit Nurkić.

Green still tried to come up with an explanation for his actions, though.

“He was pulling my hip, and I was swinging away to sell the call—made contact with him,” Green said. “As you know, I’m not one to apologize for things I meant to do, but I do apologize to Jusuf—because I didn’t intend to hit him.”

“I also don’t think I’m an accurate enough puncher to do a full 360 and connect with someone,” he added.

Nurkić isn’t buying that explanation and even went as far as to express concern for Green.

“What’s going on with him, I don’t know,” Nurkić told reporters. “Personally, I feel like that brother needs help. I’m glad he [didn’t] try to choke me, but at the same time, it had nothing to do with basketball, man.

“I hope whatever he’s got [going on] in his life it gets better.”

This is a well-established pattern of behavior from Green. He’s always been a physical player—a throwback to a bygone era of basketball when players threw their bodies around and left opponents bruised. But he’s often gone too far and crossed the line between toughness and violence. Just in the past eight months he’s stomped on the chest of an opponent, put one in a choke hold and smacked another in the face.

The previous two incidents resulted in suspensions, and this most recent one surely will as well. The NBA has already said that it takes Green’s history into account when determining his punishment. If the league hopes to put a stop to his behavior, it needs to come down on him strongly after this most recent incident. The fact that it’s his second attack on a fellow player in the span of a month needs to be taken into consideration. And maybe Nurkić is right. Perhaps Green does need some sort of help to address the root cause of his outbursts. The NBA could require that he seek counseling as a condition of his reinstatement.

Green is an excellent player—one of the best defenders of his generation and as important to the Warriors’ success over the past decade as Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. But his poor behavior risks overshadowing his greatness on the court. He should realize that he’s at risk of having these repeated outbursts become the lasting memory of his fantastic career.

The best of Sports Illustrated

It’ll be another lost season for the Chargers after Herbert’s injury.  :: Brian Fluharty/USA Today network

• Greg Bishop spoke with Jake Browning’s college coach about how the Bengals’ backup has thrived since replacing the injured Joe Burrow.
• With Justin Herbert set to undergo season-ending surgery, Conor Orr writes that the Chargers have wasted the valuable window during which they had their franchise quarterback on a rookie contract.
• The Thunder took a step forward in Chris Mannix’s new NBA power rankings, thanks to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
• NFL owners are set to meet today to discuss potential sites for international games next season. Albert Breer has details on the cities being considered.
• Draymond Green wasn’t the only NBA star ejected last night. Nikola Jokić got tossed from the Nuggets’ game against the Bulls, prompting loud boos from the crowd that had gathered on Serbian Heritage Night.
• In other NBA officiating news, Tim Hardaway Jr. earned an incredibly weak technical foul for “hanging on the rim.”
• The NHL is revamping its All-Star weekend skills competition with a new format (that Connor McDavid helped determine) and a $1 million prize for the winner.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. The Flames’ game-tying goal in the final minute of regulation. They went on to lose in overtime, though.

4. Ivica Zubac’s big dunk over Domantas Sabonis.

3. Filip Forsberg’s overtime game-winner for the Predators, putting home his own rebound.

2. Luka Dončić’s pass with his arm wrapped around a defender’s back.

1. Connor Bedard’s flawless shot to open the scoring in his first game against Connor McDavid.

SIQ

On this day in 2017, the Marlins traded away a member of their starting lineup for the third time in the span of a week. Which of the following players did Miami not trade that offseason?

• Giancarlo Stanton
• Christian Yelich
• J.T. Realmuto
• Marcell Ozuna

Yesterday’s SIQ: Which now-ubiquitous piece of sporting equipment was first patented on this day in 1899?

• Batting helmet
• Wooden golf tee
• Glass backboard
• Vulcanized rubber hockey puck

Answer: The wooden golf tee. Before that, courses had boxes of wet sand near tee boxes that players would form into a small mound to elevate the ball. (The other option was to build a turf mound, a practice that English professional player Laura Davies went viral for using earlier this year.)

The inventor of the wooden tee was George F. Grant, a dentist from the Boston area. (Grant, the son of escaped enslaved people, was also the first Black professor to teach at Harvard.) But Grant’s tee—“a wooden spike with a flexible rubber peg for the ball,” according to the PGA—never caught on. He did not market the product, and only a few were sold at a small shop near where he lived. When he died in 1910, the tee was mostly forgotten.

In 1920, William Lowell, another dentist, coincidentally, invented a wooden tee that is essentially identical to the ones still used today. He called it the Reddy Tee. It and other early tee prototypes, like Grant’s, are on display at the USGA Golf Museum in New Jersey.