Draymond Green has somewhat emerged as Public Enemy No. 1 right now following his physical altercation with Golden State Warriors teammate Jordan Poole. Most folks might say that he brought it upon himself after what they consider to be an unwarranted sucker punch on one of his younger teammates.
For his part, however, Portland Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard is trying to be as unbiased as he can in all this. For starters, Dame attempted to play down the incident, saying that this is actually a common occurrence between teammates (via Blazers reporter Sean Highkin):
“It's unfortunate. when you spend as much time with your teammates as we do, you want it to be positive and you want it to be respectful,” Lillard said. “But I'd be lying if I said there hasn't been a lot of heated moments that I've seen in my career. I'm sure it happens in every locker room. You never wish to see that.”
To be clear, Lillard is not at all condoning Green's actions. As he said, it's “unfortunate” that the situation escalated the way it did. However, Lillard also pointed out that the fact that the video of the incident leaked to the public is another major issue that will require the attention of the Warriors:
“I think what happens behind closed doors should stay that way,” he said. “It should be handled correctly, but it should stay behind closed doors. So I thought the fact that video came out is wrong.”
Lillard then tried to make sense of how the incident went down. In his mind, Dame believes that both Green and Poole will come away from this incident with regret, and perhaps, one or two important lessons learned:
“On the altercation itself, as wrong as it was, I think if you're a boxing fan, in boxing, they say you've got to protect yourself at all times. I think Draymond, who I know pretty well, probably walked away from that situation saying, ‘I probably shouldn't have done that to my teammate.' And Jordan Poole's probably walking away thinking, ‘When I push somebody, I should know that something may come back. That's it. It's an unfortunate situation.”
Finally, Lillard touched on how the general public reacted to this scandal:
“I think it's become a thing in the NBA where it's like, ‘Ain't nobody gonna do nothing,'” Lillard said. “Everybody's always quick to say that. So then when somebody does something, it's the end of the world. Like I said, it's unfortunate. But if two grown men are having words, and one pushes the other, you've got to assume that something might happen. That's just how I saw it.”
Damian Lillard on the Draymond Green-Jordan Poole altercation: pic.twitter.com/aJmnQdjdt8
— Sean Highkin (@highkin) October 8, 2022
For what it's worth, Draymond Green was previously linked to a potential move to the Blazers. Apparently, Lillard was “obsessed” with the notion of becoming teammates with Dray. I'm just going to leave that here.
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