Draymond Green isn’t worth it anymore

Last night in What Did Draymond Do This Time?, America’s least favorite power forward decided to make himself into a “Wipeout” obstacle and — OOPSIE DAISY! — earholed Suns center Jusuf Nurkić with a 360-degree forearm shiver. The resulting flagrant-2 foul got Draymond Green swiftly ejected from a game that the Warriors were leading 65-60 at the time. And I would encourage you to watch the video of Draymond’s assault below because, as with every Draymond escapade, it’s both enraging and strangely hilarious:

As you can see, class, what we have here is one of Draymond’s Oh Did I Do That? flagrants. You’ve got him bodying up Nurkić, like a normal basketball player would. Then you have him inexplicably hopping forward and losing his balance ever so slightly … just enough to claim plausible deniability. Then you have him screaming, “I CAN’T CONTROL MY OWN BODY! JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL!” as he spins himself right ’round, baby, right ’round like a record, baby and drills Nurkić in the side of the head. Ha! Classic Draymond. Will this naughty rascal ever learn? Judging by his answers at the postgame presser, no!

“As you know, I am not one to apologize for things I meant to do, but I do apologize to Jusuf because I didn’t intentionally hit him,” Green said. “… I was just selling a call … unfortunately, I hit him.”

Totally. Happens all the time. Why, just yesterday, I was trying to convince the lady at Nordstrom Rack to give me a refund on a dress shirt when, unfortunately, I stabbed her in the eye socket with a pair of scissors. And as you know, I am not one to apologize for things I meant to do (????), but here I did apologize to the corpse. Because that was a total accident. Crazy!

Of course, this has always been the case, and it wasn’t much of an issue back when the Warriors were racking up titles and Draymond’s supernatural court vision and defensive prowess made the whole enterprise go. He was the muscle. The ends justified the means, even if those means included running the length of the court to “accidentally” trample Kevin Porter Jr. The Warriors had Draymond’s back, and even lavished on him a $100 million extension this offseason to reward him and his flailing limbs for all the courageous work they’d done.

But the Warriors are 10-13 right now. They’re not only the 11th seed in a competitive Western Conference but, two and a half games back of New Orleans, decisively so. There’s little about them to suggest they can flip the mythical switch and shift into Playoffs Mode anytime they please, especially if the league sits Draymond down for another five, 10, 30 games. S—t, they could suspend him for the rest of the season and who besides Draymond would feel like it was an injustice?

To steal an axiom from the NFL, the best ability is availability, and it’s awfully hard for this man to earn his keep if he’s out suspended for weeks at a time. That fact wasn’t lost on Steph Curry after last night’s game, nor was it lost on head coach Steve Kerr, who’s always been more than happy to carry water for Bay Area Laimbeer but couldn’t hide his exhaustion this time around. Here’s what Kerr told the press about Draymond’s ejection: “We need him. We need Draymond. He knows that. We talked to him and he’s gotta find a way to keep his poise and be out there for his teammates.” And here is what Kerr looked like when he said it:

Look how tired this man is. Look how much his most annoying player has aged him. Kerr knows he’s talking into an empty telephone. He knows this is a lost cause. He knows that Draymond will never keep his poise, because why would he? Draymond’s gotten away with all of his dorky bulls—t for YEARS, with this organization’s tacit approval. It’s gotten to the point where Draymond Being Draymond has become a strangely valuable brand identity for him now, one that he can bring to the TNT studio desk the second he retires. He’s going to keep playing dirty, and the Warriors are going to keep suffering for it.

The good news is that this is the NBA, where virtually any bad contract (like the one Jordan Poole got after Draymond turned his face into hamburger) can be offloaded if you’re willing to accept a crate of rotten oranges in return. Some other idiot team might be willing to take on this incorrigible man. Maybe the Knicks (ha!). Maybe the Lakers, pairing him up with his pal LeBron (double ha!). Maybe the Wizards (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). It doesn’t matter who. It only matters that the Warriors come to terms with the fact that Draymond isn’t worth all of this Draymond anymore, and that he needs to be gone.

And if they don’t make Draymond disappear, well, then he’ll probably take matters into his own forearms and do the job for them. It’s only a matter of time now.