You won’t believe this, but Draymond Green — the Warriors’ do-everything power forward — wrote some disparaging tweets about LeBron James in 2010, right in the middle of Green’s four-year career at Michigan State.
Imgur user iah275 posted some screenshots of the old tweets (some have been taken down). Others, have not.
https://twitter.com/Money23Green/status/43664803788627968
The summer before Green’s junior year, LeBron made his original decision to head from Cleveland to Miami. Dray castigated him on Twitter like pretty much everyone with a Twitter account did that summer. We had a Twitter account, but we’re a lot older than Draymond Green. These are not that big of a deal.
Most of this stuff is the harmless bluster of a Division I athlete watching the best player in the world lose in Cleveland and then create a super team in Miami. Most of the online talk after his Decision in 2010, surrounded how LeBron had shirked his competitive responsibility to team up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami. Most of this stuff is pretty tame, especially in comparison to what a lot of people were writing about LeBron that summer.
Then, Dray used “gay” as a pejorative to put down James.
Not acceptable, and perhaps the only tweet that should inspire anger in others. But, again, Green was in college when he wrote that. College kids are idiots, particularly when it comes to people who are different. Most of the online misogyny, homophobia, racism and overall online idiocy stems from bored college students who don’t know any better and just want to stir something up or gain new followers (we’re mostly making an educated guess here, being that Twitter wasn’t around when we were in college, but stupidity certainly was).
At the time of these tweets, Green wasn’t runner-up to Defensive Player of the Year; He wasn’t one of the most integral parts of the Western Conference Champs; He wasn’t the church-going man who cheered the MVP up after Game 3 in Memphis with an invitation to dinner; At the time, Green wasn’t expected to guard LeBron James on the biggest stage in the world; Green wasn’t yet the heart and soul of the favorites to win the 2015 NBA Finals.
Here’s Draymond’s mom on the tweets now making the rounds:
https://twitter.com/babers_mary/status/605082432161890304
By most accounts, Draymond is a pretty good dude… at least if you’re on the Warriors. He can get prickly with opponents, and he’s often the one running his mouth on the court, but we’ve never seen any anti-gay rhetoric from him before, and this seems like an isolated incident relegated to his twitter feed from half a decade ago.
This is just one of the many distracting storylines that develop during the days leading up to Thursday’s Game 1.
Green’s gay slur about LeBron shows his immaturity, age and ignorance, but it doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. Kevin Durant wrote similarly anti-gay tweets when he was young, and Damian Lillard similarly attacked LeBron. It’s what a lot of people used to do unfortunately.
NBA stars aren’t deities. They’re just like us, warts and all. Let’s move on to basketball now.
