Draymond Green is king of the instigators and he put on full display as he mixed it up and almost had to fight the entire Pelicans roster.
If stirring the pot were an attribute on NBA2K, Draymond Green would be a 99 every season. The Golden State Warriors star is a master in the art of instigation and mixing things up. That’s especially true when the stakes are higher than normal, and such was the case on Tuesday night at the Chase Center against the New Orleans Pelicans in a crucial game for the Western Conference playoff race.
So it was no surprise that, with the Pelicans starting to build a lead late in the second quarter, that Green started raising the tensions with a hard foul on Brandon Ingram.
The New Orleans star took exception to what was eventually called a flagrant 1 foul against Green, got in his face, and both players ended up earning a technical foul.
Was Green done there? Of course not.
19 seconds after the flagrant foul, Green took off on a fastbreak and barreled through Pelicans wing Herb Jones, then stumbling over him clumsily, which got Jones angry, Ingram angry, and basically the entire New Orleans roster ready to fight Green.
The clapping after the fact is how you know that Green is Hall of Fame instigator.
Draymond Green starts chippiness in Warriors vs Pelicans, nearly starts fight
NBA Twitter watching the national game on TNT couldn’t help but get their laughs and proverbial shaking of heads out on social media.
Wrong dogs in him or not, Green’s antics didn’t help a bit. Prior to the flagrant and subsequent technicals, the Pelicans led 50-41. From that point, New Orleans went on a 13-2 run and went into halftime up 17 points.
The chippiness didn’t go anywhere in the second half, though Green’s first technical limited his overall involvement from there on out.