The therapeutic secret behind Draymond Green ditching retirement thoughts
01/13/2025 02:54 PM
It’s no secret that Draymond Green has had anger issues over the years, which made him take cheap shots at opponents on the court. However, the Golden State Warriors forward decided to make a change during his “indefinite suspension” last season.
Green went to therapy and agreed to regular “check-in” calls with the NBA, via ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk.
“I want people to say, ‘Man, right here was a little bleak. But then look where it went from there. And that’s due to because he took accountability,'” the four-time NBA champion said. “Regardless of how I felt about the Rudy [Gobert] situation, the [Jusuf] Nurkic situation … the Jordan Poole [incident], any situation, I took it on the chin. I took accountability for it, and I moved forward.
All three of those incidents led to Green’s indefinite suspension for a “personal history of misconduct,” which ended up as a 16-game absence. The four-time All-Star put Gobert in a chokehold and struck both Nurkic and Poole in the face, all on separate occasions.
“They’re [the incidents are] my fault,” Green admitted. “I needed to be better, and I failed. We all fail. But I’m not a failure.”
Draymond Green considered retirement after 2024 suspension
Green told NBA Commissioner Adam Silver during the suspension that he was considering walking away from the game. However, Silver and the league not only encouraged him to stick around but also provided resources to aid the former Defensive Player of the Year’s mental health journey.
Green attended routine Zoom check-in sessions with a panel of seven NBA employees to make sure he was attending therapy and making progress.
“The last thing you want is to walk in this meeting saying, ‘I f—ed up on blah, blah, blah,'” the 34-year-old said. “You want to walk into this meeting in a sense unscathed. ‘Here’s what I’ve been up to.'”
“What I end up finding with these meetings is it’s like an accountability panel, but it was also a therapy session because you start to talk about some of the things that I went through with my therapist,” Green continued.
Part of Green’s growth has been dealing with losing more healthily. As a fierce competitor, the Michigan State alum gets frustrated during tough times, but it’s no excuse for bad behavior.
“I hate losing,” Green said. “If I’m losing, you’re going to ratchet up everything that you have in order to change that. With that comes high emotion. With that comes an engagement that honestly isn’t quite welcome in this league. And so it’s a challenge. I just got to understand that [pushing the line] can’t be the way, that my teammates need me out there.”
Golden State (19-19) needs the Michigan native to maintain his newfound maturity amid a disappointing season. However, the Warriors may need to win without Green on Monday night against the Toronto Raptors (8-31), as he’s questionable with an illness, via The Athletic’s Anthony Slater.
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