Golden State Warriors player Draymond Green avoided suspension after kicking fellow NBA player and New Zealand native Steven Adams in his kiwis. This was the second time that Green did this to Adams. I'm neither a Golden State Warriors fan nor a Draymond Green fan. Although I have a mild dislike for Green because he's a big mouth who attended a rival university to my own I don't even follow the NBA that closely these days. My favored team is still struggling to become mediocre so I don't care who wins the NBA Championship. But the NBA should have suspended Green for this action. This is not a situation when there's a battle for the ball or for position and someone gets accidentally hit. This is a deliberate attempt to prevent a man from siring children in the future. Compared to other professional sports leagues the NBA has done a great job in trying to crack down on physical play and fighting. Rightly or wrongly the NBA had to battle and I think overcome a "thug" image. But in eliminating fighting the NBA may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Baseball and Hockey each tolerate fighting after particularly egregious instances of rule breaking. Football does as well although there almost anything that goes on before the whistle is already legal. But a dirty NBA player (and Green could possibly be described as such) is only going to be stopped by serious league penalties or by the knowledge that he will quickly reap what he sows on the court. NBA teams used to have enforcers for just that purpose. If the NBA refuses to punish obvious dirty play with penalties severe enough to deter it then eventually players will take matters into their own hands. Or maybe they won't. Maybe today's NBA players are too well paid and too soft to do anything like that. Maybe this was Green's way of letting Adams know that he disapproved of Adams' recent malapropisms about monkeys. Dunno. But if I were the Oklahoma City coach, in the next game I would start the last man on my bench, the non-playing scrub who normally spends the game watching cheerleaders and congratulating starters during timeouts. His sole job would be to walk up to Green and kick him in his Draymonds. Message sent. Message received. Now let's play basketball. The other problem with this non-suspension is that the NBA recently suspended Cleveland Cavaliers scrub Dahntay Jones for doing the same thing to a Toronto Raptors player. The difference? No one cares if Jones plays. He rarely does. But Green is a starting member of an exciting championship team. Double standard. The NBA doesn't want to mess with the money train. Watch the video below. Does that seem like an accident to you?
