The Warriors were more than happy to share their feelings about Green's suspension Sunday afternoon, and the way they tell the story, Green was a wrongly accused man who didn't deserve the punishment he received.
Multiple players claimed that they were going to "win it for Draymond" as if he was in the intensive care unit. Coach Steve Kerr, usually the coolest guy in the room, was seething during his media availability. The Warriors were ticked.
Not at Green, no. The subtext of the comments was crystal clear -- they blamed LeBron James for this.
The Warriors believe that James' outspokenness about the incident and subsequent trash talk in the Game 4 postgame press conference put undue pressure on the league to suspend Green, lest it cross one of its big stars. Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and Andrew Bogut all blamed LeBron without pointing the finger -- it was a master-class in passive-aggressiveness.
Mo Speights doesn't do passive aggressive. He went all-in without a bit of nuance:
"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 kind of disrespectful."
"It's messed to suspend a man over nothing. If somebody put they' balls on your head, what you supposed to do? ... [Expletive] are on the back of his head. It's kind of messed up man, but hey."
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The Warriors were angry -- the linchpin of their team was suspended in the middle of their practice ahead of an NBA Finals clincher -- but the shots at LeBron, subtle or not, were foolish.
LeBron might not be able to make 3-pointers at a rate like the Splash Brothers, and his team might not be as talented or as deep as the Warriors', but Golden State is heading into Game 5 without arguably their most critical player, and they just provoked arguably the most physically dominant basketball player of all time.
Did LeBron likely overact to Green's comments? Of course. Forgive my callousness, but if being called a "b*tch" is all that it took to set LeBron off on a tirade about "crossing the line" and "respect," then he needs to play some pickup games in a local park sometime soon. He'll hear worse in the first 30 seconds.
The NBA suspended Draymond Green for Monday's Game 5 of the NBA Finals after assessing him a flagrant foul that put him over the limit and into a suspension. The Warriors claim the Cavaliers whined to make that happen.
And to that, one member of the Cavaliers issued a candid response.
"My honest opinion? I don't give a [bleep] what they say," Cavs forward Channing Frye told cleveland.com adamantly. "I give no [bleeps] what they say, whatsoever. Like, zero. It's like, 'OK.' I don't care. I honestly don't care about anything they say.
"The only thing I'm focused on is what my teammates think, what our fans think and what my family thinks. Other than that, I've got one job and that's to win this next game. They can talk, they can say what they want, they can complain, they can scream, they can cry. We've got a job to do. We're not going to be distracted by all that."
Warriors sharpshooter Klay Thompson admitted he was surprised when he heard LeBron James after Game 4 publicly complaining to the media about Green's trash-talking antics.
"I'm just kind of shocked some guys take it so personal," he said. "It's like, I mean, you know, 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. But 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."
Cavs coach Tyronn Lue was fined $25,000 for his postgame remarks toward the officials when he said, "He (LeBron) never gets calls."
Warriors center Andrew Bogut said Lue and James intentionally took to the podium that evening with a clear plan of pouring gasoline onto an already-hot Draymond Green suspension soapbox.
"You knew after Game 4 it was going to be very likely [Draymond gets suspended] with all the stuff coming out from their end," Bogut said. "That's all their coaches and their manager have to do, try and get him out."
