Marreese Speights bluntly assessed Draymond Green, but at least Speights put his name behind his words (at least until implying he was misquoted, to which the writer countered by claiming he had audio).
Someone else in the fantastic profile of Green by Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN never attached his name.
Strauss:
multiple Warriors staffers share the opinion that Green is their most important player. Nobody replicates his set of contributions. As one team official puts it: “The guys might be frustrated by his antics, but they had an opportunity to prove themselves without him in Game 5 and they played like a bunch of [cowards].”
Multiple Warriors objected.
Klay Thompson, via Monte Poole of CSN Bay Area:
“That article pissed me off for this reason: If you’re going to call someone a coward, how are you not going to put your name to that quote?” Thompson began. “It’s easy to point to someone and call them a coward behind a shade of a shield. But why don’t you put your name to it? Then you can call us cowards. That’s fine. You can tell us that.
“But to say we played like cowards, and you’re not going to quote the guy who said it? That’s weak to me, man. How are you going to quote Mo (Speights) and not anybody else? That actually got under my skin, because you call us cowards but you’re not going to put your name to the quote? You know what I mean? You’re not going to quote who said it? You’re just going to say, oh, some executive said they’re cowards? Get out of here. That made me mad.”
Steve Kerr, via Poole:
“I don’t know who said that. I’d guarantee it wasn’t any of our coaching staff. I would be shocked if it was anybody in basketball management. We don’t do that. Nobody ever said that to me, not even to the press. But nobody ever said that to me, like, ‘those guys played like cowards.’ So I have no idea where that came from.”
“It’s upsetting because you want to keep things in-house,” he said. “If somebody wants to say something, then they should put their name on it. If you don’t feel like you can put your name on it, you shouldn’t say it.”
Thompson’s and Kerr’s resentment is warranted. It’s the height of irony to anonymously call people “[cowards].”
And the team official was wrong, anyway.
The Warriors lost the pivotal Game 5 of the NBA Finals, because LeBron James and Kyrie Irving played historically well and Golden State missed rim protection from a suspended Green. To say the Warriors played like “[cowards]” wrongly shorts both them and Cleveland. The Cavs were plenty good enough to outplay a focused and driven Golden State team with Green – as Game 7 showed.
The problem isn’t always mettle.
However, in this case, it is – for the anonymous team official.
