The Warriors insist there’s nothing to see here
Warriors #Warriors
Draymond Green, right, was absent from Thursday’s practice after reportedly punching Jordan Poole.
Draymond Green will miss a few days of practice as penance for reportedly punching Jordan Poole in the face, and he won’t be suspended for games that count, team brass said Thursday. Maybe he’ll be fined; the Warriors aren’t saying. Everything else is up for interpretation.
The Warriors trotted out Bob Myers, Steve Kerr and Steph Curry to discuss the situation on Thursday. Kerr and Curry were visibly more agitated than Myers, but all three pushed the same line: Everything is fine. It certainly could be true — Michael Jordan once punched Kerr in the face at practice in an incident you may have heard about — but the protesting got to be a little much.
“Actually, it’s one of the best vibes that we’ve had in my 12 years here, as far as camp and health and mental health and camaraderie,” Myers said.
“There’s been a great vibe,” Kerr said. “We’ve had a hell of a camp.”
Curry went the furthest, even claiming the specific practice where Green punched Poole was fine. “Vibe in practice was great,” he said. “Obviously an unfortunate situation that could have been avoided.” Only the best vibes, the most beautiful vibes.
Kerr and Curry were most animated about one very Draymond-friendly report that came out Wednesday night after the punch. “Draymond Green was apologetic in aftermath of the altercation with Jordan Poole,” Yahoo’s Chris Haynes tweeted. “But there was a buildup stemming from teammates noticing a change in Poole’s behavior throughout camp with the guard on the verge of securing a lucrative extension.” Kerr — again, a leading expert in getting punched in the face by a petulant maniac — and Curry pushed back on Haynes’ implication, in so many words, that Poole was asking for it.
“Jordan has been fantastic throughout camp,” Kerr said. “There was a report that I was made aware of last night, someone put out there that Jordan had an attitude in camp. Nothing could be further from the truth. He’s been fantastic. Disappointing to see misinformation out there, but I wanted to make sure I set the record straight on that.”
Curry defended Poole too. “There was a specific tweet that was put out yesterday insinuating that JP’s attitude or something has changed since he’s been in this training camp. … It’s absolute BS,” he said. “Andre addressed it yesterday with his tweet. We can kind of leave it at that. JP’s been great. There’s nothing that warranted the situation yesterday, we’ll make that clear. … I hate that that became part of the narrative, it’s not fair to JP.”
The Andre Iguodala tweet Curry is referring to was posted an hour and a half after Haynes’ “he kinda deserved it” report. “What we not gone do is talk crazy about my young fella JP,” Iguodala wrote. “great character kid… miss me with all that other bs… straight from the ‘SOURCE.'” (He quickly added the mandatory pro-Draymond tweet: “And it’s family business with my bro @Money23Green too…”)
To be fair to Haynes, he wasn’t the only one to report that Poole can be a little annoying. “Jordan Poole came into the building arguing with people,” Athletic reporter Anthony Slater said Thursday morning, meaning on Day 1 of Poole’s time in the NBA. “He came into the building thinking he was worth $100 million.” There’s the difference: in this version, if Poole is cocky, he’s always been like this. Even Klay Thompson had joked about Poole’s ego recently. “It was nice to humble Jordan Poole,” Thompson said after beating him in a 3-point contest in Japan last week.
So maybe Poole is a lot to take, and maybe he’s about to become incredibly wealthy. But Myers took pains to say that the two were not connected. “I don’t think this was related to who’s getting paid and who isn’t,” he said. “I don’t sense that. Make your own conclusions. Probably more important what players think on that than what I think, but I don’t see it.”
All three branches of Warriors government said that Thursday’s scrimmage without Green was drama-free. “It’s less awkward than you think,” Myers said. “It’s not bad. If you all were at practice today, you would not have seen some lingering awkwardness. I didn’t see it. I didn’t feel it.”
So there you have it. No problems. At least not until the next episode of a certain podcast is released.