Only the mission matters. Every second counts and one man has one chance to do the impossible. This is Mission Impossible: The Draymond Green protocol.
The New England fog lies thick and heavy on the old revolutionary cobblestone. Profanities hang thick too as drunken Bostonians broadcast a tradition of inebriated antics. A man scrambles through it all as he talks into his watch. He’s looking at people through windshields. He’s staring down strangers. He’s disgruntled, but he’s broadcasting through it all. He’s a multitasker, and the people must know his thoughts.
“Draymond! Abort!”
The voice isn’t his: he’s being warned. He checks his watch in time to see a team member stumble and teeter. He sees a view of the river’s oily surface through the mist as the man topples over a stone railing. Hearing the splash, he jogs up the stairs. He is just in time to not see his brother’s vanished body. The river looks untouched, and so Draymond backs away from the bridge’s banister, mouth agape, fog everywhere, wondering what’s next.
“You see,” and he starts talking into his watch again. He’s out in the fog asking questions like, “Do you read me?” But no one answers. And he’s not sure if he’s the ghost or the one being ghosted.
A car door shuts. He streaks round the corner, running again. He’s always running, looking busy, looking alert. He’s running when the car blows up. Smoke and flame in the fog, he can’t believe it. And so he’s talking into his watch again. Flames crackle. Gasoline fumes permeate the fog and choke off bystanders. Draymond Green starts running again, and he sprints the way a movie star sprints, like he’s studied how to run without ever knowing how to run. He’s all upright and practiced, moving like he can see himself, like he’s in a dress rehearsal for the race of his life — and he is. This is the last call. All assets either play or get played. He knows that. He’s conscious of how he’s slipping. He doesn’t want to talk about that. What spook does?
When he comes galloping like Paul Revere’s horse around the corner and through the fog, he finds another teammate propped against a locked gate leading to an alley. He’s too late. A step slow. The teammate is done for. He can sense the step slow pattern on his rotations. He holds the bloody knife in his hand. This can’t be good, he says, and he spills the reaction into his watch. He wonders if anyone else has eyes on this. He looks for a phantom whistle. He looks for a judge with which to plead his case, but all he finds is the moon splitting a fogbank.
He grumbles some more to his watch as a siren sounds from the harbor. He turns. He thinks this is the most intense broadcast I’ve ever given. He knows this for a fact even if he can’t be sure anyone is actually listening. Then he says the quiet part out loud. He says, “This is the most intense broadcast I’ve ever given. This better be doin’ numbers.”
The officers unload from the boat. They’re running towards him, so he climbs the gate. He is one hundred and ten percent hustle as he makes for the last rung. When he reaches the top and swings his leg over, he transforms into sheer desperation as he attempts to kick the man in the moon right in the crotch. He lands and takes off running again. He is very good at showing effort. Always has been.
He ducks into an old payphone booth. But he’s talking into his watch again. The payphone isn’t even there, just the booth. The words sound like a coded message. He sounds like he’s reading out a playbook. “This is Draymond Green. They’re dead. We call that bravo bravo one fish in the hole.” He laughs and gives no antecedent. The ‘they’ and the ‘we’ could be anyone and sound as if they might be interchangeable. “They knew we were comin’,” he says. Again, the antecedents are foggy. He raises the intensity in his delivery. “The podcast is public!” he yells before exiting the phone booth. “The podcast is public!”
The meeting isn’t for a few hours. He has time to kill, but he can’t go anywhere he’ll be recognized, which is almost anywhere at this hour. Someone yells an expletive at him. Everyone is always yelling expletives in this city. He checks his watch for the nearest movie showtimes. Nothing but Marvel movies. He doesn’t respect CGI. He wants to see real actors doing real stunts. He can’t believe the new Top Gun isn’t playing anywhere nearby. Tom Cruise is a guy who knows how to take a dive.
When Draymond arrives at the meeting place, he’s tired. He’s been running the streets all night. His team has been decimated. He limps like a man whose Achilles tendons are inching towards old age more rapidly than the icecaps are melting. They call this coming in from the cold, but he feels heated. The restaurant glows neon blue in the night. He can make out an aquarium through the front wall of windows. The waiters all wear red jackets that make them look like dweebs from a bygone era. One day, he thinks, I’ll do an Anthony Bourdain-type thing and just travel. But he’s not there yet. He still has work to do. Scores to settle. When he gets his Anthony Bourdain travel show, though, he sure as hell isn’t visiting Boston again. Not ever again.
This mission is for Draymond Green, should he choose to accept it
He sits down across from Steve Kerr.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” says the older man with a younger man’s haircut. “I know how much all this means to you, Draymond.”
“Yeah,” sighs Draymond. “Respect.”
The man pulls a booklet from his suit jacket and slides it across the table.
“You follow me?”
“On Twitter? Sure.”
“I think we’ve lost enough of late.”
“You mean I’ve lost enough, right? ‘Cause that’s what this is about, right? You call it how you see it. They call it how they see it. Well, I’m the only one who was out there. I’m the only one who can call it how I see it.”
“You seem hellbent on denying culpability.”
“Look, I know where I went wrong, but I also know where I went right. You’re reaching. That’s a big reach. Respect. But that’s a reach.”
“Who else is left, Draymond?”
“We didn’t all go down. Where’s Steph? I didn’t see Steph go down.”
“What?”
“I saw what happened to KD. I found Harrison. Klay? I saw that too. But where’s Steph?”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“Yeah, we’re supposed to be mutuals. You’d think if I followed you, then you would follow back. That’s how this is supposed to work. Why was there another team out there tonight?”
“What do you mean?”
Draymond leans in, his eyes burning and widening and burning. “Just follow me around the room then. I get that Poole and Otto and Gary are all here. I even see you got Kevon there. But what’s Udoka doing at the table right behind you? And why is Derrick White seated over there? Have you ever been to San Antonio, Steve? All due respect, but I gotta ask whose legacy are you trying to protect here. I know Tatum is a Kobe disciple. I know about Chicago too. It’s all in the podcast.”
“Would you like to tell us more about this podcast?”
“What about it?”
“Have you ever heard of the Noc List?”
“I know it’s 75 names long. I know it’s the list you wanted us to get tonight. I also know it’s incomplete.”
“Well, we’ve noticed your podcast is starting to draw numbers. We have a penetration. The defense just isn’t there. The job you thought you were doing tonight isn’t the one you ended up doing. We don’t have you out there to just talk.”
“You used all of us as decoys? You used me as a decoy?”
“Correct.”
Draymond leans back against his chair. “Respect.”
“And I’m sure you’ll arrive at the real goal if you think on it long enough.”
“I’ve seen this movie before,” says Draymond, reaching for his pocket. “This whole thing was a molehunt. That’s what this was.” He unsheathes a stick of gum. He holds it in a tight fist on top of the table. “A molehunt. A reach. A game of cat and mouse.” His other hand peels back the foil. He looks up. He places the stick of gum in his mouth. He chews. Then he spits out two syllables, “Re. Spect.”
“You’re correct, Draymond, and the mole is deep inside the organization, and like you said, you survived. You’re the only one left.”
“I want to know where Steph is. What’s he think about all this?”
“Why don’t we talk that one over quietly? I want you to get up from the table and walk out the front door. Get in that car parked across the street, board a plane with the ticket I gave you when you came in, and meet me at GSW headquarters. Certain protocols need to be followed.”
“Is this Steph’s idea? Is he still out there?”
“Steph never comes in from the cold. In fact, Steph never gets cold.”
“He tell you to say that?”
“You’re being benched, Draymond.”
“I don’t know about that. Seems like a reach. Respect. But that seems like a reach. There’s the old way of doing things and the new way. I see myself as part of that new way.”
“Everything that’s new one day gets old, Draymond. Have you thought about that? Are your affairs in order?”
Draymond chomps the gum in his mouth. It smacks against his teeth as he reaches in his pocket for the final piece. He needs something more explosive than what he’s chewing on at the moment. As he removes the stick from his pocket, his hand undoes the foil. As a man defined by conflict, he’s pictured this moment, acting it out dozens of times in the mirror.
“You’re taking this better than I thought you would. I thought you’d be upset.”
“I mean, I’m not happy, but it’s not like you’re telling me I can no longer speak my mind.”
“But, Draymond, that’s exactly what we’re telling you. You’re not simply being removed from the board. From now on, we’re drafting your podcast the way we see fit.”
Draymond’s fist closes tight on the final stick of gum. The red end pressing into the green end. He swings his arm wide across the table. Glasses of water crash and spill and shatter, but when he releases the shot of gum, it doesn’t make its target. That’s what makes this moment different from the one he imagined. The stunt falls short. Instead of landing on the aquarium’s glass wall where it could have released a sudden flood, the stick of dynamite lands at an empty table where no one is sitting. Draymond looks at Kerr. Kerr looks at Draymond. They don’t even duck under the table as the small boom bursts into a flaming crater in the middle of the vacant table. In fact, the fire alarm doesn’t even sound, and a waiter douses out the fire with a pitcher of water.
“Is that it?” says Kerr.
“That’s it,” says Draymond.
“Respect,” says Kerr. “Respect.”
Outside the restaurant, a thick Boston accent starts hurtling expletives against the window that separates the two veterans from the deep layer of fog enveloping most of the city. Somewhere, even farther removed, is the brightness of the moon looking for the man who tried to slide tackle it from behind.