Draymond Green, 'Knucklehead': Mavs Trade Opinion on Warriors - Fight VIDEO
DALLAS - Yes, in a vacuum, you want Draymond Green on your team. Indeed, had the tornado-like force been a member of the Dallas Mavericks instead of the Golden State Warriors, your Mavs would've won the Western Conference Finals and advanced to the NBA Finals in place of the Warriors.
But an NBA team isn't in a vacuum.
And Green's latest foolishness suggests that maybe pursuing him a trade (or eventually signing him as a free agent) would be a violation of a Mark Cuban philosophy on the number of "knuckleheads'' a locker room can bear.
"I have this rule: a team can have one knucklehead. You can't have two. One knucklehead adapts, two, hang out together," the Mavs owner has said.
This week at a Warriors practice, the knuckleheads ruled.
Jordan Poole and Green engaged in a fight, the 32-year-old Green throwing a vicious punch at his teammate.
Maybe it was over the two of them jousting for a contract extension with the team. Maybe it's because Poole made fun of Green, long a Defensive Player of the Year candidate, for "shooting bricks.''
Or maybe it's just that Draymond - talented as he is, and fueled by passion as he is - has a difficult time corralling his "knucklehead'' nature.
Mavs fans will recall in last year's WCF how Green "played on the edge'' in ways that frustrated Dallas ... while being ignored by the refs. There is an obvious benefit to that.
At the same time, chemistry matters (read more here about this year's Mavs training camp. The Luka Doncic-led Mavs think they have that, and they must, for just based on talent alone, they shouldn't have taken down the Suns in the playoffs and they shouldn't have been as competitive as they were with the champion Warriors.
Draymond has apologized his team, the Warriors say. But does that fix the problem?
"He will tell you he has been over that line,'' Warriors GM Bob Meyers said. "But he always comes back," Myers said. "Nobody is saying they don't want him around ... but (the fight) was not a good moment.''
It is hard indeed for any team to say "they don't want him around.'' But toss into the mix the idea that Green's punch might've been about money, the idea that he has often "been over that line,'' and that chemistry is a delicate thing ...
And Draymond Green just created a little bit more of a reason for teams to "not want him around.''
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