Draymond Green says he’s sick of ‘agenda’ to make him look like ‘an angry Black man’

Draymond Green has played in nine games so far this postseason, and in those games, he’s been whistled quite often. He has been hit with two flagrant fouls, leaving him two flagrant foul points short of an automatic one-game suspension. And more importantly, he picked up his fifth technical foul of the playoffs in the Golden State Warriors’ Game 2 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Thursday night.

That call came in the second quarter when Minnesota Timberwolves big man Naz Reid was defending him on the perimeter. Reid fouled Green, but after the whistle, Green flailed into Reid and hit him in the back of the head. He fell down to the ground from there, and Green was assessed a technical foul, bringing him just two shy of seven, which also triggers a mandatory one-game suspension in the playoffs.

Green was so upset after the whistle that Warriors coach Steve Kerr removed him from the game seemingly in an effort to calm him down. After Game 2 ended in a Warriors loss, Green spoke to reporters about his frustration with the way he believes he is treated and perceived. 

“I’m not an angry Black man,” Green said. “I’m a very successful, educated black man with a great family. And I’m great at basketball, I’m great at what I do. The agenda to try to keep making me look like an angry Black man is crazy. I’m sick of it. It’s ridiculous.”

Green has a lengthy history of technical fouls, flagrant fouls and suspensions, especially in the postseason. He was infamously suspended for Game 5 of the 2016 NBA Finals for exceeding the threshold for a flagrant foul points that leads to an automatic suspension. He was suspended indefinitely last season for a flagrant foul on then-Phoenix Suns big man Jusuf Nurkić and wound up missing 12 games. For his career, he has been fined 227 times for a total of $938,000 and has been suspended on six different occasions for a total of 21 games, according to Spotrac.

Green did not elaborate, specifically, on the nature of this perceived agenda. It is therefore not clear if he is referring to the officials making these calls in the moment, the league setting the standard for what gets called, or the media for how it portrays him. He did not take questions after delivering his brief statement on Thursday.