The first thing Trevor Noah said to Draymond Green when the big-talking Warriors star came on to The Daily Show was what so many have wondered.
“I’m shocked that you have time to do anything after winning your fourth NBA championship,” Noah said.
But Green has, apparently, found all sorts of time to promote himself and his work on a variety of platforms. And he’s made sure to ratchet up some personal rivalries, too.
On his latest edition of “The Draymond Green Show” that posted on Sunday, Green had more words for ESPN analyst and former NBA player Kendrick Perkins and seemed to escalate their beef, calling Perkins a racial slur in the middle of a rant about Perkins’ commentary style.
Perkins took offense to the use of the slur and posted a response to Twitter, which he has since deleted “out of respect for my company and colleagues” but Perkins added that “I was heard loud and clear.”
“Hey Draymond, you good? The [expletive] you talking about? Didn’t you just win your fourth championship? What the [expletive] you worried about me for?” Perkins said. “What, you mad? You made because I’m doing it my way and it’s happening to work? I’m doing it my way. I ain’t gotta do it your way, I’m doing it my way.”
Perkins also intimated that those in the NBA believe Green is a big talker, but does not back up his words with actions.
“We all know you’re all bark and no bite,” Perkins said. “We know this. The NBA brothers know this. A lot of them that’s talking behind your back, the whispers, they know this. They know you’re not going to do nothing. This is proven. This is facts. Stop with all the tough talk.”
Green did stop with the tough talk for a portion of the NBA Finals, saying he was playing “soft” during the NBA Finals and struggling in Games 3 and 4, to the point of being benched for a critical stretch of the fourth quarter in Game 4.
But after back-to-back sterling efforts helped clinched the title, Green has been back to his bashful ways, including on NBC’s multi-network coverage of the championship parade on June 20.
“I told y’all, ‘Don’t let us win a (expletive) championship and clearly nobody could stop it. I warned y’all,” Green said at a pre-parade event televised by NBC Bay Area. “So I’m just going to continue to destroy people on Twitter, as I have been.”
The telecast was not able to censor any of Green’s curses — both before and during the parade — fast enough to keep them off the air. It even led to NBC Bay Area’s Raj Mathai to quip that the FCC was not going to be happy with his network.
But an NBC spokesperson told Bay Area News Group that the FCC has not made the station aware of any complaints over Green’s comments as of Monday, June 27, one week after the parade.
With a week since that parade, Green has struck up a media tour for his various endeavors. A new Amazon Prime show called “The Sessions,” released its first episode focused on Green on June 17. The show looked at how Green is trying to “unlock further levels of greatness” by working with self-help guru Deepak Chopra and wellness expert Devi Brown.
Green also has his own podcast, which had the episode that talked about Perkins, and recorded a special cross-platform episode with JJ Redick and his “Old Man and the Three” podcast that was released on Tuesday.
And Green also went on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Noah, where Green was asked about finding the balance between fans cursing at players and his desire to respond. Green, while praising NBA commissioner Adam Silver for being “one of the best CEOs in America,” asked for the right to respond to fans in the same way they are talking to him.
“Commissioner Silver comes out and says, ‘Hey man, those Boston fans are great’ as they are saying, ‘[Expletive] you, Draymond,’” Green said. “So my response to that is, ‘Great, cool. Can I turn and yell, ‘[Expletive] them?’ Because if I can, then no problem. Let them yell what they want to yell, I can yell what I want to yell and I can continue down the court.
“At some point, you’re kind of allowing them to do this and encouraging it, in a way. Because they know, ‘If I say that to Draymond and he says that to me, he’s getting fined $25,000. He’s getting fined $50,000.’ So what I’ve said to Commish is, ‘No problem. That was fun. Let them do their thing, but let me do my thing and don’t hit my pocketbook.’”
Through it all, what Noah says he loves about Green rings most true.
“Draymond Green says what he feels. Draymond Green says what he means,” Noah said. “The fans love you because of this. I love watching the postgame interviews because of you.”
