Draymond Green didn’t make the 2019 NBA All-Star team. Neither did Rudy Gobert. For some reason, Green had lots to say about Gobert’s reaction, which included briefly welling up with tears when discussing his All-Star snub and Gobert’s mother’s reaction to the news that the Utah Jazz center didn’t make it.
Folks on Twitter seemed to have a pretty harsh reaction to Gobert’s emotions, which amounted to not much more than him having to pause while talking to reporters and covering his eyes.
Green, never one to stop flapping his gums, added to his justification for publicly criticizing Gobert by going into his own thoughts on CJ McCollum’s podcast recent “Pull Up” podcast.
Via NBC Sports Bay Area and Pull Up:“I guess I was just raised a little different. That’s just not OK with me. I’m all for passion and people showing their emotion and all these things, but to cry that you don’t make the All-Star Game is a bit much for me,” Draymond explained. “And credit to Rudy -- he didn’t make it and he had 25 and 13 that night. Go do that though ... credit to him for going out and having the game he had right after thinking he should have been an All-Star and not getting the nod. I respect that and I rock with that.
“But the first part (crying) -- I can’t get with that. I don’t believe in that. I don’t think that’s cool.”
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“Also, when you look at what we do, especially Rudy -- Rudy’s a big man, he’s somebody who locks the paint down; he’s an intimidator -- you do that and you kind of lose some respect from some guys that you got to play against,” the 2017 DPOY said. “Some guy (who may have feared you) is now looking at you like, ‘Huh? Wait. You crying?’”
“So even more so than anything, the mental edge that he may have on someone -- it takes a hit. And the mental edge can be exactly what gets you over the hump. The mental edge can be exactly what allows you to dominate one particular matchup.
“It’s not necessarily the fact it’s a man crying -- men cry, women cry, people cry, kids cry, everyone cry -- but you’re crying over All-Star and we’re talking about basketball ... that’s my issue with the interview.”
Green has let his emotions get the best of him in ways that, frankly, are far more embarrassing than anything Gobert’s done. The man is a technical foul machine, and as Dan pointed out when this story first came about, also admitted that he had to keep himself from crying in relation to the All-Star game.Via NBC Sports Bay Area:
Draymond Green thought, for the briefest of moments, he was hearing things, that his mother’s voice was in his head because surely she was not in his presence.
But Mary Babers-Green was indeed on the talkback line, and hers was the voice the Warriors’ power forward heard Thursday afternoon, telling Draymond he had been named to the Western Conference All-Star team.
“I had to keep from crying,” Green said on a post-announcement conference call.
Green is a big talker and his criticism of Gobert, out of the blue, wasn’t additive in any way.
It’s probably rare that grown adults will take to crying in a professional setting, but the fact that Gobert was moved to do so was indicative of the passion held for his life’s work. Even the supposed basketball reasons Green gave in opposition of Gobert — a loss of an intimidation factor leading to an edge — is wholly reflective of how Green plays the game, and doesn’t have anything to do with how Gobert approaches things.
The few tears Gobert shed were his own individual expression of his dedication to his purpose, but more importantly stand as an obvious projection in insecurity on the part of Green in the face of something antithetical to stereotypical masculinity. There’s nothing that says Gobert can’t be a Defensive Player of the Year and also a guy who cries — because that’s factually what he is. This is about Green not being able to understand how that can be the case, because that isn’t his own experience.
That Green doesn’t “believe” in crying in that situation, ultimately, says more about him than it does about Gobert.
