Clippers center Marreese Speights, who played for the Warriors the last few years, offered insight into Draymond Green and Klay Thompson for Ethan Sherwood Strauss’ fantastic feature on Green:
“Draymond f—ed up practice and s—,” then-Warriors center Marreese Speights says. “Draymond’s a good guy, but I think at the end of the day, it hurt the whole chemistry of the year.” One player in particular, he says, took much of the heat: “Draymond and Klay got into it a lot.” (Thompson declined to comment for this story.
A code of conduct exists within the NBA. Some yelling is expected, but vets do not accept frequent Bobby Knight — style haranguings from younger players. Or, as Speights puts it, “Guys don’t respect you if you yell at them in front of all these fans. We’re not trying to lose the game. F — .”
Shortly after that was published, Speights tweeted:
Usual caveat: We don’t know what Speights’ vague tweets refer to.
If Speights is talking about these quotes, Strauss confirmed to me he recorded them and fact checkers listened to the audio before the story was published.
Maybe this is my bias both as a journalist and someone who knows Strauss, but I believe Strauss. I don’t think mainstream sports reporters are in the habit of making up quotes and attributing them to specific famous people. I also don’t think Ethan would be foolish enough to double down if he weren’t certain the audio verified the quotes.
