Draymond Green Reacts to Jordan Poole and Chris Paul's Trash Talk

Draymond Green is an expert in NBA trash talk and was delighted at what he saw between Jordan Poole and Chris Paul Wednesday night.

Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

Trash talk is an art-form in professional sports — particularly in the NBA where players are routinely in close quarters and often guard the same player for the majority of the game.

Wednesday night against the Phoenix Suns, Warriors’ guard Jordan Poole found himself in the midst of a trash-talking battle with veteran point guard Chris Paul, which caught the eyes and ears of Poole’s teammate, Draymond Green.

“When you get legends like Chris Paul arguing with you and you’re young, that’s a beautiful sign,” Green said of the jawing match between Poole and Paul. “That means they know about you.”

The drama between Paul and Poole was a constant during the Warriors wire-to-wire loss to the No. 1 seeded Suns. But the chirpy nature of their discussions picked up in the second half as the Warriors kept pace with Phoenix behind Poole’s game-high 38 points.

In a game that featured six lead changes in the fourth quarter alone — four in the final five minutes — tensions clearly ran high as the two guard butted heads.

“He don’t back down to nobody,” Green said of Poole. “That’s just not what we do here. What’s this his third year? I’ve never seen him back down to anyone. CP is no different.”

Green is no stranger to verbal altercations. In fact, Wednesday night, he and Suns’ wing

Jay Crowder were each given technical fouls for their less-than-friendly interaction in the third quarter.

As a connoisseur of trash-talk himself, Green believes it's a great sight that Poole has already found a way to get under the skins of some of the NBA’s greats.

“That means you’ve got them on alert because if you didn’t, he wouldn't waste his time talking to you,” Green concluded. “t’s a beautiful sign and he didn’t back down and it’s great to see.”