After Draymond Green picked up his fifth technical foul of these playoff during last night’s Wolves clash, he was visibly frustrated by the call. He even got into the official’s face and began yelling at him before Steve Kerr subbed him out. “The agenda trying to make me look like an angry Black man is crazy. I’m sick of it. It’s ridiculous.” Green said postgame, fed up by the alleged agenda of making him look a certain way.
His comments sparked a major controversy, and Stephen A. Smith hopped on his podcast to address the issue, “I thought about what I wanted to say about this particular subject because to be quite honest with you, it’s pretty delicate and I think this is something that needs to be mentioned off the top right here. When we’re talking about Draymond Green, there’s two stories to tackle here. One is the reported racial epithet thrown in his direction while he was on a bicycle during the game.”
Yes, the ESPN veteran pointed out a key incident from last night’s game. While Draymond was on the sidelines riding a stationary bike, he appeared to have a heated exchange with a fan. Reports revealed that the fan was later ejected for directing racial slurs at Green. Stephen A. hinted that the exchange might also have played a part in Green’s postgame frustration. Then, he revisited similar fan interactions that have tested other players’ patience in the past, specifically the one with LeBron James four years ago.
“That’s not the first time this has happened… I’ll never forget when LeBron James was in Atlanta and he had a fan removed from the game. LeBron has never done something like that. To call for a fan to be removed from the game, they certainly said some out-of-pocket stuff to him.” The analyst remarked. Well, Smith was likely referring to LeBron’s heated altercation with some courtside fans in Atlanta during a Hawks game. After the Lakers star got into a verbal spat with them, the fans were ejected from the game.
James even addressed the altercation once the game got over, “They might have had a couple drinks, maybe. And they could have probably kept it going during the game, and the game wouldn’t have been about the game no more, so I think the referees did what they had to do.” Stephen A.’s sole purpose of bringing up the LeBron incident was showing that fans can go a bit too far sometimes. He also brought up other incidents, like the time when a fan dumped popcorn on Russell Westbrook while he was heading to the locker room, and when some fans targeted Allen Iverson with racial slurs during a Pacers game while Stephen A. was a beat writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Keeping these instances in mind, Smith understood why Draymond reacted the way he did, “I don’t know enough of the facts, but I do know that if the team and the arena security felt compelled to remove the fan and it was verified that something racial had been said to Draymond Green, I don’t blame him for being pissed off.”
(Developing Story)
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