Golden State Warriors scared of Draymond Green suspension?

With a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals, the Golden State Warriors shouldn’t have too much trouble closing out the Cleveland Cavaliers, but being without Draymond Green could change that in a hurry.

If we know anything about Draymond Green, it’s that he’s going to do him. By that we mean that he plays right on the edge a lot of the time, whether it’s the regular season or the NBA Finals.

That’s why it wasn’t a huge surprise to see Green get into it with LeBron James in Game 4, possibly calling LeBron a derogatory term for a female dog. And this was after fans and the media speculated over whether he should have been suspended for kicking Kyrie Irving in Game 1 (he was not).

Now things may have reached the boiling point, and internally, the Warriors might be preparing for life without Green. ESPN cites team sources saying the team is concerned about a league suspension for Green, and that the decision could be made today.

The issue here is that the NBA is reviewing the incident between Green and James and deciding whether to assess a flagrant foul after the fact, something it often does. Either a flagrant 1 or flagrant 2 will mean automatic suspensions for Green, with the latter causing him to miss the next two games.

Draymond’s take is that he disliked when LeBron stepped over him, calling it “disrespectful.” It seemed to be a bit of an imagined slight more than anything else, but those types of things are often the fuel which Green uses to fuel his non-stop motor.

In any case, being without Draymond Green for Games 5 of 6 would make the rest of the series much different for the Warriors, perhaps making them more vulnerable at home, where they rarely lose, and turning a possible Game 6 into an uphill battle considering the Cavaliers smoked them in the first of two games in Cleveland in this series.

Then again, the Warriors are the defending champions for a reason, and even won playoff games this year without league MVP Stephen Curry. A suspension to Green might not automatically turn the NBA Finals into a competitive series, but it would add some drama to what otherwise seems like a coronation for Golden State.

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