Draymond Green could use a teammate like Steve Kerr

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

Civil enlightenment need not always arrive by way of wing and a prayer. It could also be conjured by a slow, vertically challenged white guard who averaged 6.0 points per game during his NBA career.

This space has more than once highlighted the virtues of Steve Kerr, maybe once too often. But even though my very own conceived hashtag #WhatWouldSteveKerrDo hasn’t caught fire like it should, there’s another Kerr-related parable unfolding that bears the same beats as past parables which still shine like North Stars properly aligning one’s moral compass whenever the needle becomes bewitched.

Before Kerr became an NBA player and head coach with nine championship rings to his credit, he played collegiate ball for the University of Arizona. During warm-ups before a road game against arch-rival Arizona State, the home-based “peanut gallery” managed to draw tears from Kerr with chants of “PLO! … PLO! … PLO! …” and other ignorance while referencing the murder of Kerr’s father Malcolm Kerr several years earlier while the elder Kerr served as the president of American University of Beirut.

It was actually members of the Islamic Jihad Organization who shot the educator in the back of the head, not representatives from the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization). But don’t get too down on the Sun Devil fans. It was the thought(less) that counts.

How did Kerr respond? Or in other words … #WhatDidSteveKerrDo? He took the high road and didn’t give the fools the satisfaction of lashing out in response before going 6 of 6 from 3-point land while scoring 20 points in the first half alone, leading the Wildcats to victory.

Fast forward to the dawn of what would be a historic season with the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. Back for a full season after returning from his pro baseball excursion late in the season before, Michael Jordan was channeling Caligula like he wanted to be the “G.O.A.T.” of unhinged tyrants.

After one inexcusable act of bad faith, Kerr confronted Jordan and paid the price as Jordan punched him out.

The incident has been documented numerous times, most recently by the miniseries “The Last Dance”. In most cases, Jordan recounted how small he felt after hitting the smallest (in physical stature) player on the team. He profusely apologized to Kerr, refocused his competitive fire, and led the Bulls — with help of Kerr and other Bull teammates, of course — to a then NBA-record 72-win regular season that could have easily been 75 wins had it not been for some ball-sport bad luck that bites even the greatest of teams.

As for good luck, the Bulls are no doubt the luckiest of all sport franchises. This is being stated with the Bulls amidst a championship drought that has exceeded a quarter of a century.

That still doesn’t erase the Bulls’ immense good fortune of having Jordan fall into their lap with third pick of the 1984 NBA Draft because the team that picked before them needed a center, though Jordan could have probably been an uber-force at that position, too.

But the Bulls were also very lucky to have Kerr, who — though a man of great restraint as exhibited during his formative years as a grossly harassed Wildcat — courageously intervened to call out a living legend known to intimidate opponents and teammates like God taking the form of the Devil. The pending Greatest NBA Team of All Time featuring an array of enigmatic and volatile characters — some with intertwining histories — could have become a trainwreck just after leaving the station if Jordan’s despotism was allowed to reach a critical mass.

When listing my Chicago Bulls All-Time Fav Top 5, I have Jordan at No. 1 for obvious reasons and Kerr at No. 5 for reasons divined from the anecdotes above.

Who fills the spots in between? Dennis Rodman No. 2, Jimmy Butler No. 3, Ron Artest No. 4.

I haven’t watched the NBA with the same vigilance since the fall of the aforementioned dynasty. But one player periodically snares my attention. Maybe it’s because he frequently displays the same type of unapologetic aggressiveness, tempered assertiveness, stupefied intensity and reckless belligerence that define some if not all traits and habits exhibited by the players listed at 2 to 4 … or even 1 to 4.

Draymond Green.

The four-time All-Star and four-time NBA champion who plays for the Golden State Warriors incidentally coached by Kerr has been suspended indefinitely for the latest of a continuous string of transgressions. This one was a roundhouse blow to the face/head of Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkic, who was floored for more than a minute. It resulted in Green’s 20th game ejection of his career and sixth … yeah, sixth … league suspension.

Green, who was recently suspended earlier this season for applying a rear-naked choke to Minnesota Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert, later apologized to Nurkic for the inflicted distress but claimed he was merely flailing his arms theatrically to coerce the nearby referee into calling a hand-check foul on Nurkic.

The league didn’t buy it. Neither did Kerr, who supported the indefinite suspension of the 12-year veteran even though the Warriors likely won’t go far in the postseason without him.

“To me, this is about more than basketball. It’s about helping Draymond,” Kerr was quoted as saying. “I think it’s an opportunity for Draymond to step away and to make a change in his approach and his life and that’s not an easy thing to do. That’s not something you say, ‘OK, five games and then he’s going to be fine.’”

Kerr and the Warriors deserve criticism for the way they’ve allowed Green’s bad behavior to become more emboldened while leading up to the indefinite suspension. When he bullied one of the game’s all-time greats Kevin Durant off the team at the end of the 2018-19 season, breaking up what could have been a dynasty greater than the Bulls’, that should have been a red flag for intervention … or expulsion.

At the behest of Kerr and the Warriors, Green is to undergo counseling though compliance won’t guarantee his reinstatement.

If Green had played for the Bulls, I may have listed him in my Top 5. But I would have to drop someone from the list and I would hate for that to be Kerr because someone like Green needs a teammate like Kerr, perhaps more so than a coach.