OAKLAND, Calif.: Draymond Green punched LeBron James in the groin on Friday night, and now LeBron James’ reputation is unfairly taking a hit.
The NBA assessed Green a flagrant-1 foul Sunday, suspending the Warriors’ emotional leader for their possible NBA Finals closeout Game 5 Monday in Oracle Arena.
The Warriors responded angrily after practice at the Oakland Convention Center, painting James as the bad guy.
They said James was disrespectful for stepping over Green after their entanglement and exchange of words with less than three minutes left in the Warriors’ 108-97 victory in Game 4 at Quicken Loans Arena. They obviously consider James a whiner and criticized him for his inability to handle trash-talking common in basketball, starting when they were kids.
“Guys talk trash in this league all the time. I’m just kind of shocked some guys take it so personal,” the Warriors’ Klay Thompson said, laughing. “It’s a man’s league and I’ve heard a lot of bad things on that court, but at the end of the day, it stays on the court.
“Obviously, people have feelings and people’s feelings get hurt even if they’re called a bad word. I guess his feelings just got hurt.”
When told of Thompson’s last remark, James laughed and asked the questioner to repeat it.
“Oh, my goodness,” James said.
“I’m not going to comment on what Klay said because I know where it can go from this sit-in,” James said. “It’s so hard to take the high road. I’ve been doing it for 13 years. It’s so hard to continue to do it, and I’m going to do it again.”
Ayesha Curry, wife of the Warriors’ two-time MVP Stephen Curry, didn’t see it that way.
“High Road,” she tweeted. “Invisible bridge used to step over said person when open floor is available left to right.”
While I wish James hadn’t stepped over Green, I can understand why he didn’t take a more circuitous route. It was the heat of the moment. Whatever Green said to James stung. James said Sunday he believes the grapple at the top of the key was intentional and he was “just trying to get back into the play,” when he stepped over Green.
The Warriors seemed to enjoy fueling the firestorm.
“You’re just in a situation that, you want to get a guy suspended. You started it. You stepped on a man’s neck,” the Warriors’ Mo Speights, a former Cav, told ESPN’s Ethan Strauss.
Speights denied Green hit James in the groin and said of James, “A guy does something like that, you kind of lose respect for him. I had a lot of respect for LeBron over his career, since he was in high school. But do things like that to get a guy suspended? That’s kind of disrespectful.”
Shaun Livingston implied the path James took was the equivalent of stepping over a homeless person on the street.
“I don’t know anybody that wants another person stepping over him on any level, on any job. On the streets, you see a guy outside and he’s just sitting down homeless. You walk around him, you’re not going to step over him. But in the midst of a game, emotions are high, things happen,” said Livingston, another former Cav.
“There was plenty of room on the court for LeBron to go around him and he chose to walk over top of him,” Harrison Barnes said.
Already holding a 3-1 series lead, the Warriors may have been psyching themselves up for an expected tough closeout game. It sounds as if Green’s suspension will give them a chip on their shoulders that will ignite them.
James has taken a pounding on the court for years and the referees have looked the other way. That’s the price James has been forced to pay for his gift of his powerful body. It could have been the reason James snapped in his dust-up with Green.
But in the words flowing from the Warriors on Sunday, they ignored the fundamental issue. Green knew how close he was to a suspension and yet he risked it, risked hurting his team with a second consecutive championship at stake.
The player they call the heart and soul of their team is the one whose reputation should be sullied.
Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read her blog at www.ohio.com/marla. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.