The NBA is WWE and Draymond Green is ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper
Professional basketball and professional wrestling are virtually the same thing and Draymond Green is the villain to basketball that “Rowdy” Roddy Piper was to wrestling.
For basketball fans, Draymond Green is a fantastic player on the best team in the league, but doesn’t always play by the rules and looks to bend the rules further than most.
For professional wrestling fans, Draymond Green is every bit as vocal and chaotic as “Rowdy” Roddy Piper was during his Hall of Fame career in wrestling.
Simply put, Draymond Green is the NBA’s “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
Let’s think about this for a bit so everyone understands. What made Roddy Piper so hated, but so beloved before he tragically passed away almost two years ago? He was loud. He was obnoxious. He bent the rules. He broke the rules. And, he always had a problem with everyone’s favorite star.
Why is Draymond Green the lone public enemy in the game of basketball today? He’s loud. He’s obnoxious. He bends the rules. He breaks the rules. And, he’s involved in the NBA’s best rivalry to date with the league’s greatest player of his generation.
Basically, what I’m saying is: Roddy Piper vs. Hulk Hogan in the 1980s (and 1990s in WCW) isn’t far off from Draymond Green vs. LeBron James in the NBA during 2017.
Let’s break it all down.
Bashing a city/building/people, etc.
It’s no secret in the NBA that the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers don’t like each other. People from Cleveland and Oakland live in different communities. This year is the third straight time they’ve faced each other in the NBA Finals.
In Oakland, Draymond Green is Hollywood Hulk Hogan.
In Cleveland, Draymond Green is Roddy Piper.
This is what Green said after the Warriors lost on Friday night in Game 4 of the NBA Finals and he was ejected, but then not ejected, which led Cavs fans to chant, “Dray-mond sucks!”
(Which, of course … Green obviously loved.)
Draymond on Cleveland "Don't seem to be the sharpest people around" pic.twitter.com/zLHGl9GQQB
— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) June 10, 2017
That’s savagery that Piper would’ve been proud of.
If Green wasn’t subject to fines in the NBA for things he could possibly say during his media availability, you’d think he’d stretch out his roasting of Cleveland, don’t you?
“The Quicken Loans Arena is called The Q? That’s Qute. Hey, I got a Q for you, Cleveland. What is The Land? Nobody started saying this until 2014 when LeBron, whose jersey YOU burned constantly and seemingly forgot, came back like a little puppy missing his owner, who ran him out of town to begin with! You’re really not that smart around here, are you, Cleveland?”
(To be honest, Draymond’s promo skills would probably need some work. But, the boos would rain down.)
Body of work
Obviously, Green couldn’t be compared to Piper if he didn’t
completely break the rules of physics and basketball
bend the rules a little bit. He’s gained a reputation as a kicker.
No, not an NFL kicker. Those aren’t people.
He’s more of a kicker in the sense of Ric Flair or Shawn Michaels. He’s either going to kick you in the groin or the face.
Roddy Piper wasn’t really known as a kicker in his day, but he’d have his moments like Green where you think he’s turning a corner and then goes back to his old ways.
I’ll give you an example: Piper knocking the late great Captain Lou Albano into next week.
“If you think they didn’t hate me so much, do you think they would’ve been cheering you so much?”
When Roddy Piper arrived in World Championship Wrestling during the fall of 1996, his first appearance was after the main event of Halloween Havoc when Hollywood Hulk Hogan beat Macho Man Randy Savage to retain the WCW title.
Piper engaged in an awesome promo with Hogan and one particularly line stood out as they discussed their past encounters in the World Wrestling Federation.
When Piper was discussing the very first WrestleMania event, he went on and on about everything he did to “draw heat” (for my hoop fans, that means trying to be a bad guy) and then asked Hogan, “If you think they didn’t hate me so much, do you think they would’ve been cheering you so much?”
Not only was it a fantastic point by Piper, it got me thinking a bit.
I re-worded that question from Piper and came up with: “If Draymond Green wasn’t so blunt about how he feels and kicked people, would people be cheering for LeBron James as much as they are in the NBA Finals?”
Think about it: Green was an anomaly coming out of college. He was an awesome college basketball player at Michigan State University. He was an early second-round pick of the Warriors and basically didn’t have a position coming into the NBA.
Roddy Piper wore a kilt. When he first got into the business of professional wrestling, he was just a skinny kid from Saskatoon, Canada that worked his way all the way to the top of the business as one of the most popular voices with a microphone in his hand. Nothing was handed to him either.
Draymond Green is what the NBA needs. He’s what LeBron James needs. He’s a villain that knows he’s a villain. He doesn’t care that you don’t like him. He probably rather you didn’t anyway.
That’s why moments like these are so special. When the villain gets pushed back, the hero becomes a superhero. It’s pure pro wrestling 101.
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LeBron James is John Cena with his talks of striving for greatness everyday.
Draymond Green is the resident bad boy and [insert any bad guy in wrestling since 2005].
So, when you see Green walking into Oracle Arena playing the bagpipes before Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday night with a “HOT ROD!” shirt on while wearing a kilt that would surely break the internet, you now understand why he did.
