Draymond Green: NBA owners should go on record, vote for/against Sarver

On Tuesday, Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green released a new episode of his podcast, The Draymond Green Show, sharing his thoughts and questions surrounding the Robert Sarver situation that the Phoenix Suns face.

(I’m well aware that there’s probably a majority of Suns fans who don’t like Green as a player or a person, but he’s one of a select few among NBA players with such a strong voice that carries weight, and he makes some excellent points in the episode.)

Green addressed what he felt to be the absurdity that Sarver would use the N-word as described in the Wachton, Lipton, Rosen & Katz report along with the comfort needed to use the word once, let alone the “at least 5 times” described in the report. Green admits that the word is still part of his own lexicon:

“I, too, am a little wrong for using the word. I, too, am a little out of touch… [using that language as an endearing term] is a little messed up in itself… I have gotten better about using the word, but the reality is I still do use it.”

Green also touched on Silver’s press conference following the announcement of Sarver’s suspension and fine, which I’m already on record as finding baffling.

“I know we live in a world where you could do like a million good things and one bad thing and people paint you to be a bad person. Let me say this: this does not paint Adam [Silver] or the NBA as like these bad people as if all the decisions they’ve made up until this point have been incredible and this one kinda fell short of what should be.

“But for everything that the NBA stands against and stands for, this report that came out last week is the total opposite of everything that the NBA stands for. And so to think that someone like Robert Sarver that’s acting in that matter can continue can continue to represent us, that’s bull----. You can’t continue to represent way more people than yourself with those views.”

As for the action Green does want to see in addition to the suspension and fine, he spoke about the process of removing an owner, which requires a three-quarters vote from the other 29 owners, or 22 in favor of voting him out:

“Why isn’t there just a vote… because then also what we’ll know is who else may be standing behind closed doors? That’s something that I would love to know, and based on these votes, maybe we’ll know or maybe we won’t… But what you will know is values… what they believe in, morals… quite frankly we’ll know who stands with us and who don’t.”

To close out his thoughts, Green credits those — like second-largest stakeholder in the team Jahm Najafi and jersey sponsor PayPal — who have come out in strong opposition to Sarver.

Like it or not, this isn’t going away, at least in the near future. We are still yet to hear from any Suns players not named Chris Paul or Jae Crowder (if you count Crowder’s “WOW” tweet). Plus, the silence from head coach Monty Williams and general manager James Jones is deafening with Sep. 26’s team media day staring us all right in the face.