Say what you will about Draymond Green and his cockiness and his borderline questionable play, but at the end of Game 7 on Sunday, when the Cleveland Cavaliers had just spoiled his team’s historic season and snatched away the NBA title on their home court, the Warriors’ forward swallowed his pride and made it a point to stay on the floor, in the midst of that euphoric celebration, to personally congratulate LeBron James, who had been his bitter enemy the entire series.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for one teammate, in particular. Instead of following suit, Klay Thompson left the court and headed to the locker room promptly after the final buzzer but did not return to shake his opponents’ hands. Later realizing his faux pas, Thompson offered his congratulations to the Cavs via a media scrum, and that’s where the following quote from Draymond Green gets kind of tricky.
In an interview with Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated, Green’s reason for remaining on court to give props to his rivals contained some pretty strong language about sportsmanship, in general.
“I just knew that going to the locker room after the game wasn’t right. That’s what a loser does. I’m not a loser. They earned it. They took it from us. It’s right to tell them congratulations. I made sure I got to everybody. The coaching staff. The players. Security guys. Everybody. They earned it. They never quit. I just wanted to make sure I got to everybody.”
Now, it’s certainly a bit of a leap to try and claim this was aimed directly at Thompson, as Green was quite possibly just speaking in broader terms. But his general feelings about the subject can’t be misconstrued. Green, however, is not the type of sports star to manipulate the media to passive-aggressively criticize one of his teammates. He’s not afraid of confrontation, so you can just about bet if he had anything he wanted to get off his chest to Klay or anyone else, he would say it directly to their face.
