It is all about Draymond Green

He's volatile. He has four rings. But the punch changed it all

Interesting that after the Warriors’ second round exit in the playoffs, both Steve Kerr and Draymond Green came out and admitted it.

“The punch,” when Green cold-cocked Jordan Poole in the pre-season basically sabotaged the year.

“Some of that (chemistry) was lost this year, for sure,” Kerr said. “There’s no hiding from it. The incident with Draymond and Jordan . . . played a role in that.”

Speaking on the Stephen A. Smith podcast, Green said the Warriors would still be playing if the punch hadn’t happened.

Green took a different tack than Kerr, blaming the incident for causing him to take a back seat and not call out the “slippage” on the team. (And we’ll discuss that in a minute.)

But for now, let’s step back and consider:

All the smart money says the Warriors are going to resign Green to a new deal. But what if Green went to another team? What would the fan base think?

For starters, he’d be asked in his opening press conference about leading the NBA in technical fouls with 21. He was suspended twice this year, once for exceeding the regular season limit of 16 and once in the playoffs for stomping on Domantas Sabonis.

That would surely lead to other confrontations, fines and suspensions — the LeBron James shot in the crotch in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, kicking Oklahoma City’s Steven Adams in the groin among others.

And someone would definitely mention allegedly shouting “We don’t need you” at them-teammate Kevin Durant, possibility driving Durant away.

In a new city, fans would have to be wondering, “What did we get ourselves into here?” This guy sounds like an agent of chaos.

Warriors fans, of course, have been conditioned to shrug it off. Draymond being Draymond. He may be volatile, but he’s also got four rings.

Except that the punch changed it all — at least in the short run.

I can’t say this newsletter comes out regularly, but if you’d like to read it when it does, click here:

“He knows that he had a great season this year, from a basketball perspective,” Kerr said. “But he knows that he also compromised things by what happened back in October.”

All of which leads us to Poole. We pause for a moment for everyone to throw up their hands in exasperation.

Like you, we have seen enough headlong, “me on three” drives to the rim that end up with a wild shot or turnover. And no, falling down afterwards does not make it better.

However . . .

It is one thing to learn that somebody can’t play in the NBA. There’s not much to be done at that point. In a cut-throat league, they identify the busts quickly and they are gone.

But it is something else to know that a prospect can play at this level, but is undermining himself with poor judgment.

Poole can play. He’s proved it. Even this year he averaged over 20 points a game. And as Kerr said, “scoring 20 points in the NBA is hard.”

Poole also appeared in all 82 games and playoffs, and that’s not easy either.

Also, it was interesting that Steph Curry said after elimination that the team was lacking that “change of pace.” At his best, Poole — flicker quick and a good shooter — is that.

Even more intriguing, Curry — who parses every word carefully — gave a post-season interview to The Ringer. As he left the locker room, he pointed to Poole’s locker and said, “He’s the key.”

If you’d like to share the newsletter, we couldn’t be happier. Click below:

So, everyone is saying, this should be simple. We’ll just get Green and Poole to have a nice dinner somewhere, they will hash out their differences, embrace and come back to play side-by-side, brothers in arms.

And that’s where we might have a problem.

It goes back to the Stephen A interview and how Green sees himself. His take on the punch was that he was trying so hard to let Poole get over the incident, that he didn’t speak up or call out “slippage” on the team when he saw it.

It is pretty clear Green sees himself as the keeper of the flame. He’s the guy who calls out players who aren’t playing up to the Warrior standard. He may lose his temper and raise his voice, he implies, but it only fires up the team.

I’m not so sure at this point.

It looked pretty clear that Poole wasn’t looking to get input from Green, even at the end of the year. Check this video:

It might not just be Poole. The younger players might watch Green picking up technical fouls like free drink tickets at the company Christmas party and wonder, “This is the guy who is giving us advice about how to play?”

The generational divide might be real. And if so, it sounds like it all started with that punch.

So Curry can have his opinion, but I’d suggest another view.

The key? It’s Draymond Green.

Contact C. W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Twitter: @cwnevius