FOR THE THIRD time in as many matchups this season, Draymond Green found himself tangled up with Memphis Grizzlies center Zach Edey. Edey gave Green a nudge to the back to win an offensive rebound during a Jan. 4 game, and Green wanted to make sure the rookie wasn't rewarded with an easy putback.
Green delivered a hard foul to Edey's right arm before wrapping the Memphis big man with both arms, something the 7-foot-4 rookie took exception to, shoving Green off of him.
The referees handed Green his second flagrant foul of the season on Edey -- the first was upgraded to a flagrant following review for locking his arm around Edey's ankle and tripping him in a 123-115 Warriors win Nov. 15.
Barely 30 seconds after getting tangled with Edey in January, Green was tagged with a technical foul for screaming "boom!" in an official's direction as he headed back down the court following a made 3.
Green was incredulous, but didn't lose his temper. He kept his cool even as Jaren Jackson Jr. scored 19 of his 23 points in the second half against the Warriors and their proud defensive leader.
"Draymond did a great job of staying poised when Jackson was scoring," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after the 121-113 win. "That's frustrating for Draymond. He takes that very personally, and the fact that he kept his composure; yeah, he picked up the flagrant, [but] I thought it was a questionable call. The tech, he didn't cuss or anything.
"He was emotional. But he kept it on the right side of the line, and that was an important part of the win."
Green crossed that line too many times last season, leading to a five-game suspension for his chokehold on Rudy Gobert and then, perhaps the low point of his career, an indefinite suspension for striking Jusuf Nurkic in the face that ended up costing him 12 games.
Green's career was in the balance, and he wasn't sure how much longer he wanted to keep this fight up with opponents, referees, the league and his emotions.
Green had a newborn daughter, Hunter, and he didn't want his young children to see him losing control like he did with Gobert and Nurkic. He felt as if he was inching closer to retirement when he had one of the most important conversations of his life with NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
"I told him I don't want to do this anymore," Green told ESPN. "This doesn't serve me anymore.
"It wasn't that I was contemplating to do it right then. But I was [thinking] I probably got a year left and I'm done."
But it was during his indefinite suspension that Green began to feel he was making strides. He credits therapy and something Silver and the NBA required him to do -- attend routine NBA-led check-in Zoom sessions with a seven-person panel to ensure he was participating regularly in counseling/therapy sessions -- with helping him grow into a "totally different" player and person. It has helped the Warriors' emotional leader navigate his way through a frustrating Golden State slump the past seven weeks.
"He's always been so passionate," Kerr told ESPN. "And when he goes wrong and his passion gets away from him, it turns into anger. ... He's in a good place family-wise; he's a great dad. He loves his kids. He recognized last year how much his actions impacted his young kids. He doesn't want his kids seeing him in that light. And it's easy for everybody on the outside to say, well then don't do that stuff.
"But he is a force of nature and as competitive as any person I've ever seen. His game lives on the edge of passion and rage, and he has to find that balance. And he's found it this year."
For Green, it was simpler.
"The bulls--- had taken over the love; the drive was gone," Green told ESPN. "And so bulls--- taking over just led me down a bulls--- path. And it just led to more bulls---."
GREEN WAS IN the Footprint Center for a Warriors game against the Suns on Dec. 12, 2023. But mentally, Green was anywhere but downtown Phoenix.
As Brandin Podziemski looked to inbound the ball with 8:23 remaining in the third quarter, Green went to establish position on Nurkic near the Warriors' sideline. Green said Nurkic was pinching his right side and as he tried to free himself from Nurkic, Green spun and flailed his right arm, striking the Suns big man in the face.
Green was ejected for the third time that season for a flagrant foul 2. Nearly a month earlier, Green had been suspended for five games -- but this time, the punishment would be far more severe. The NBA suspended Green indefinitely for his "repeated history of unsportsmanlike acts."
"On that night, I wasn't even at that game," Green told ESPN. "I didn't want to be there. I didn't feel like I was there. My body was there. My mind was not at all. My emotions were not at all. I was not there.
"I was there because I had to be there. I had zero interest in the game, in being on the floor. I was just there."
The indefinite suspension was the sixth career suspension Green had received from the league. There was the five-game ban for his headlock around Gobert's head and neck, a one-game suspension in the 2023 playoffs for stomping on Domantas Sabonis' chest during a first-round game in Sacramento, and the costly suspension during the 2016 Finals for accumulating too many flagrant fouls after he took exception to LeBron James stepping over him and flung his arm up into James' groin during Game 4. Green also has the most ejections (20) of any player over the past 25 seasons, according to ESPN Research.
Then there was the incident he wasn't suspended for. During a preseason practice ahead of the 2022-23 season, Green punched teammate Jordan Poole. He was fined by the team and voluntarily left the team for a stretch but did not miss any games or face any discipline from the league.
While Green called the Poole punch one of his "biggest failures as a vet" on Penny Hardaway's podcast, it wasn't until sometime after the Gobert incident that he began to wonder what he was doing.
"The reality is there's a time for everything," Green said. "So I can still be me and can still mix it up with people, but there's a time to get close to that line. There's even a time to cross the line. But you can't teeter it all the f---ing time. And I was just teetering it all the f---ing time.
"And that just becomes distasteful."
AS GREEN LOGGED into the first NBA Zoom check-in mandated by Silver, he saw seven faces staring back at him.
To ensure that Green was being held accountable and going through with counseling during his suspension, Silver set up a group that was dubbed "The DG check-in calls." The NBA's Kathy Behrens, president of social responsibility and player programs, and David Weiss, executive vice president of operations and administration, represented the league. The Warriors had general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr.; Rick Celebrini, VP of player health and performance; and David Kelly, chief legal officer, on the calls. Chrysa Chin, the National Basketball Players Association's executive vice president of strategy relations, also joined Green's agent, Rich Paul, on the Zoom check-ins.
Memphis' Ja Morant was required to participate in similar calls when he was serving a 25-game suspension to start the 2023-24 season because of conduct detrimental to the league. While Green saw familiar and friendly faces, he admitted he went into the first two calls feeling as if he were standing in front of a tribunal with little interest in participating.
"I think he was mad. He plays with a chip on his shoulder and an edge. And I think he came to the calls initially with that chip and that edge," Behrens, who ran the meetings, told ESPN. "I think he was pissed maybe at himself, maybe pissed at us, pissed at the situation."
There were about a dozen calls in total. They initially took place twice a week. If Green tried to do a call while driving in his car, Behrens made him pull over, and his camera always had to be on.
"We were clear with him that there had to be discipline," Behrens said. "But we also made it clear that we didn't just want it to be about punishment and we'll see you in 10 games, 12 games or 14 games. It was, for all of us, let's make sure that you're getting the help you need and that you feel both the accountability and the support from the systems that are around all players."
It all changed for Green on the third call. He started talking more. And when he began sharing experiences or what was on his mind, the others chimed in with their own personal experiences. Green began to see the calls not as a weekly check-in with authority but rather a healthy weekly discussion with seven of the most successful people in their respective fields.
"The last thing you want is to walk in this meeting saying, 'I f---ed up on blah, blah, blah,'" Green 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 was back on the court in Memphis on Jan. 15, 2024, just over a month after he was suspended. By All-Star Weekend, Green had played in 14 consecutive games. At that point, the check-ins went from two a week to once a month. The NBA and Green's panel felt as if the check-ins were no longer needed after he went through half a dozen and showed progress.
"We wanted Draymond to address what he identified as underlying issues surrounding his conduct on the court," Silver told ESPN. "He committed wholeheartedly to that work, including counseling and regular check-ins with the league office and the players' association, which continued long after he was reinstated."
Green wouldn't accept the check-ins coming to an end. He told everyone he wanted to continue the sessions. They've met six more times since last All-Star Weekend, the last coming in October before the season started.
"These meetings became so therapeutic for me," Green said. "It's helping me, and I f---ing love it. My plan is to do these meetings for the rest of my career because they're incredible."
Green knows the NBA check-ins, though, were not true therapy sessions. He sees professionals for that.
Green said he started therapy two years ago -- because he "was dealing with something really f---ing heavy" -- and called it one of the hardest things he had to do. He said it took him years to finally sit down with a therapist because he was "f---ing scared s---less."
"Starting therapy was f---ing hard," Green said. "Because I'm from Saginaw, Michigan. I'm from an all-Black neighborhood that you don't go to therapy or you're f---ing weak. So you're retraining a brain that's been thinking a certain way for 30 years.
"The last thing you do growing up on the north side of Saginaw is [something that is perceived as] weak."
He currently has two therapists, as well as a sports psychologist. He wasn't seeing them "actively" before the indefinite suspension, but he tries to see at least one each month even when the schedule is hectic. There are times when Green gets two sessions in a week.
The Warriors star knows what people are envisioning when he talks about seeing a psychologist -- this generation's Bad Boy lying on a stereotypical long leather couch. But Green doesn't care because he sees and feels the benefits.
"I've never had my feet up on a couch," Green said. "Maybe I should do that."
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GREEN REALIZED THIS summer that he had been splitting his on- and off-the-court personalities. He says he is a "really, really, really nice guy" who gives a lot off the court. But come tipoff, he "will fight you tooth and nail to the f---ing bitter end."
Green felt he had to "merge" and "marry" both sides if he was going to grow. Green says he has become a nicer Draymond on the court.
"Things are totally different," Green said. "I'm different."
So far this season, Green has handled a variety of tests. He traded taunts with Poole in November, faced Gobert three times in two weeks in December and has gotten physical with Edey each time they've met on the court. And he continues to bark at referees -- his lone ejection this season is the result of two technical fouls he got in 33 seconds near the end of that win over Memphis in November, and he received the latter while he was on the bench.
Travis Walton, a former Michigan State point guard who has been one of Green's best friends since he started recruiting a then-16-year-old Green to the Spartans 18 years ago, says Green's interaction with officials this season is a clear sign of his biggest progression with controlling his short fuse.
"He's more intentional," said Walton, who is also Green's trainer and chief of staff for Green's The New Media company. "He's more softer with things. Maybe when he's ready to erupt [in a training session], he's like, 'Let me look at it from a different perspective,' [where] the old Draymond would've went off. The old Draymond would've had a lot more to say than the Draymond right now.
"That's a nicer Draymond."
When Green and Gobert met three times earlier this season, hardly anything of note happened outside of a Green foul on Gobert where he unintentionally made contact to Gobert's face Dec. 8. Green would finish that 114-106 Warriors win by blowing by the Minnesota big man for an emphatic one-handed driving dunk -- Green's best highlight of the season.
Gobert, for his part, has moved on from last season's incident.
"It's hard to know what's going on in someone else's mind," Gobert told ESPN's Tim MacMahon. "But I just hope for him that he's happy, because he's a father, he's a husband, he's a leader of this community. Regardless of what happened in the past, I have empathy for everyone. I want to see him be happy and be the best version of himself."
Perhaps nothing has tested Green more than a massive Warriors slump that saw them drift from a 12-3 start into a 7-16 dive. He moved to the bench for a stint last month in full support of Jonathan Kuminga -- something he admits he would "absolutely not" have been able to handle when he was younger -- and yelled at Buddy Hield in an attempt to get the guard to focus during a recent loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Green has tried to be a leader.
"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."
After the Miami Heat crushed a listless Warriors team, 114-98, at home on Jan. 7, Green told his teammates in the locker room that they had lost their "soul" and edge, and that it was his fault.
Green was asked how he regains that edge.
"F---ing everybody up!" Green said. "No, I'm just playing. It's just about really being in the mix ... causing havoc, creating turnovers. When things go wrong, who's going to be there to stop the [negative] body language from [becoming contagious]? Having that edge."
It's been a constant process of change for Green since the beginning of the summer. He lost 30 pounds in the offseason to make sure he was as physically prepared for the season as he was mentally, and he feels his game is improving in Year 13.
He's moving better, heavily contesting 3s at the fourth-highest rate in the NBA. The Warriors have also allowed 0.9 points per direct drive when Green is the help defender this season; that ranks fifth among 40 players to help on 250-plus drives, per Second Spectrum tracking. And he is making 1.4 3-pointers per game this season, the most he has averaged in a season in a decade -- he is one of five players with at least 35 steals, 35 blocks and 35 3-pointers this season, according to ESPN Research.
He says he has rediscovered his motivation and no longer contemplates retirement with an assist from therapy and the "DG check-in calls."
"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,'" Green said. "Regardless of how I felt about the Rudy situation, the Nurkic situation ... the Jordan Poole [incident], any situation, I took it on the chin. I took accountability for it, and I moved forward.
"They're my fault. I needed to be better, and I failed. We all fail. But I'm not a failure."