Draymond Green, the outspoken NBA star, is opening up about a racist incident he allegedly faced while playing in front of Boston Celtics fans. Green, who appeared on the first episode of the Unfiltered With Complex Sports series, said Celtics fans were calling him the n-word when his Golden State Warriors were playing in Boston during the NBA Finals in June.
First, there was the usual type of taunting, Green said.
“You hear boos, and I mean I’ve heard people screaming and yelling at me everywhere that I go,” the Warriors forward told Pierce Simpson in the interview.
Green said he also heard cursing from the fans, but that’s not what bothered him most.
“I’ve never heard an entire gym, every time I touched the ball or I don’t have the ball, an entire gym [screaming] ‘F**k you Draymond.’ I thought that was cool, actually. That didn’t rattle me,” he said.
But the racial taunts, Green said, crossed the line.
“When I’m running down the court and it’s ‘b***h,’ it’s the n-word, those are insults at my character,” he said. “Those are insults to me as a man. So you’re in this place where it’s like, ‘I really want to grab one of these people and wring their neck,’ but I’m going to lose that battle.”
The NBA star said he was also bothered by the people who failed to condemn the racist incident.
“And then to hear people say, ‘Oh, that’s just a part of the game.’ Y’all put a code of conduct up on the screen every night, that’s just a part of the game? Oh, it’s a part of the game because it’s me,” Green said. “Which is why I said on my podcast I wear that as a badge of honor. That’s a special thing.”
Green’s wife, Hazel Renee, went to Instagram during the Finals to condemn the NBA and Celtics fans.
“In no way, shape or form should fans be allowed to chant obscenities at players! Are they not human?” Hazel wrote on her Instagram story. “Is someone standing at your job saying off the wall things to you? The NBA has a whole code of conduct card at every seat about fans and their behavior and how they could be ejected from a game or banned, but a whole crowd/ section numerous people get to chant f**k you Draymond.”
Draymond Green’s wife, Hazel Renee, took to Instagram to call out Celtics fans for their ‘F**k you Draymond’ chants as well as calling him a ‘b**ch’ and a ‘motherf**ker’ in front of her kids. pic.twitter.com/v3E7kajQDL
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPointsApp) June 9, 2022
Green had the last laugh in the end when the Warriors defeated the Celtics to win the championship.
