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Steve Kerr and the Golden State Warriors are back home for Games 3 and 4 of their second round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves. But all the attention over the last day has been on Draymond Green and an apparent incident with a Timberwolves fan.
During the second half of Game 2, Green was seen in a now-viral video on a stationary bike near the Warriors tunnel when a Timberwolves back began heckling him.
Warriors' Steve Kerr reacts to Draymond Green incident with Timberwolves fan
Game 2 between the Warriors and Timberwolves was out of hand for much of the second-half, but a fan heckling Draymond Green with racially charged insults and taunts quickly caught the attention of the sports world.
On Friday morning, the Timberwolves released a statement, saying the fan involved in the incident was ejected from the game in addition to a second fan.
“During the fourth quarter of last night's game against the Warriors, a fan was ejected by Target Center security for violating the NBA Fan Code of Conduct in an incident involving Draymond Green,” the Timberwolves announced in their release. “A second individual, who was identified by surrounding patrons as making racially charged comments towards Green, left on his own before arena security could confirm his identity. The team is continuing to investigate, and additional action may be taken.”
Minnesota Timberwolves Statement on Fan Ejection: pic.twitter.com/vJvAqLSz7b
— Timberwolves PR (@Twolves_PR) May 9, 2025
During a media availability back in San Francisco on Friday evening, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr explained his conversations with Draymond Green during the team's film session leading up to Game 3 on Saturday night.
“I don't think it will impact the game,” Kerr said over a video conference call with reporters. “I wasn't aware of what happened in terms of the fan yelling the insults until I read about it this morning. I talked to him about that.
“And we did talk about the technical count and just the whole set of circumstances. But I know Draymond well, he's going to be ready to go tomorrow. He's going to play a great game. He understands where we are in the series and, you know, we have this great opportunity. And it's 1-1 and we've got home court advantage. We've got our home crowd tomorrow. So he's excited, I'm excited, and we move past all that stuff.”
After Game 2, Draymond Green kept his postgame press conference short, but made a statement that was heard loud and clear in the sports world.
“I'm not an angry black man,” Green said. “I'm a very successful, educated black man, with a great family and I'm great at basketball. I'm great at what I do. The agenda to try to keep making me look like an angry black man is crazy. I’m sick of it. It’s ridiculous.”
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"i'm not an angry black man. I'm a very successful, educated black man… I'm great at what I do… The agenda to keep making me look like an angry black man is crazy. I’m sick of it. It’s ridiculous.”
— Draymond Green 🗣️
(via @anthonyVslater)pic.twitter.com/HtgKxhNZhT
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) May 9, 2025
On Friday, the Warriors head coach praised the Minnesota Timberwolves for their handling of the sensitive situation involving the fan and Green.
“The only thing I can say is that the Timberwolves handled it perfectly, for their security to be on it and to remove the fan,” Kerr added. “Obviously, that stuff is ugly and unacceptable. And so, we want to thank the Timberwolves organization for handling it as well as they possibly could. And I just think that things like this happen occasionally. It happened to me a couple of times as a player. Fans crossing the line, yelling stuff at you, it's painful. I can't sit here and claim to know what it would be like to be in Draymond's shoes as a black man, to hear racially insensitive comments like that. But I've heard my share of stuff that's really painful and hurtful and it's not ideal, but you always want the support of the security and the crowd, the home crowd, and like I said, the Timberwolves handled that beautifully and Draymond is handling it really well.”
Steve Kerr didn't want to directly compare his experience with Green's, but did share his own hurtful experience shortly after his father's passing while adding that he believes this incidents, however rare, happen in the NBA.
“It's unacceptable for any fan to do that to a player,” Kerr continued. “And when you say it's unacceptable, there has to be action that goes with that term. And that's exactly what the Timberwolves did. The security immediately ejected the fan. So we are really grateful for the way the T-Wolves handled the situation.
“I know that ‘Minnesota Nice' is a phrase to describe Minnesotans. And I found that to be 100% true. The last few days, every single person I ran into was so kind and everybody was saying the same thing. Like ‘I'm pulling for the T-Wolves, but you guys are always welcome in our city.' It's a real thing, the hospitality in Minneapolis and Minnesota. So I never take words from one person and label a city with that. There's just going to be people, individuals, sometimes they're drunk, whatever, who cross the line and it's unfortunate, but it doesn't at all impact my view of the city of Minneapolis.
“These ugly incidents are, I don't think they're common, but they do happen occasionally. And I mentioned earlier, they happened to me when I was in college. Not racial taunts, but taunts about my father who had been killed in a terrorist act a year earlier or so. And that was the most shocking moment of my entire playing career to hear somebody saying something like that, that was so personally hurtful and painful and intentionally trying to hurt me.
“I empathize with every athlete, whether it's Draymond last night getting taunted, racial taunts, really anything. It seems like a few times a year you read about situations like this. I think Russell Westbrook in
Utah a few years ago had to go through something like that. And it's unfortunate, but like I said, I believe most of these incidents are pretty isolated and it's really important that people handled them the right way and the Timberwolves absolutely handled it the right way.”
Game 3 between the Golden State Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves will be Saturday night at 5:30PM PST on ABC.
