Jordan Poole — Sports Commentary

So, Draymond Green, where have you been? Oh, never mind. It’s all on that tape, which is as big a story as your brief absence. You know how when people leave work they call it punching out? Sorry, which is what you said you are about your recent contretemps.

Some people thought you should have been suspended, but fortunately for you they don’t coach or work as executives for the Warriors. Besides, if you didn’t already know, nobody is supposed to hit anyone, much less a teammate.

Nobody wonders if you’ll play hard. That’s in your DNA. You’d never have made it in the NBA without your passion and intensity.

What has some worried is a few players, one being Jordan Poole, whom you punched in practice, will not feel comfortable playing the season with you. But teammates have battled physically and still won titles. Think of those Oakland A’s.

Then again, that was in the 1970s, before cell phones, items that would provide a literal picture of an event. And before a news service (?) like TMZ, which has sources seemingly everywhere. Somebody at the Warriors facility took that video. On ESPN, Tony Kornheiser called it sabotage.

What Warriors coach Steve Kerr called the punch and subsequent reaction was “the greatest crisis” of his coaching career.

When during that career you won four championships in a span of several years, there haven’t been many crises, great or small.

For certain, Draymond and the Dubs accomplished the near impossible, knocking the 49ers out of the top spot of the TV sports reports, a difficult task indeed.

Kerr, who once was slugged by Michael Jordan when they were teammates on the Chicago Bulls, went about his well-scrutinized business with the determination and irritation of an individual who’s been there and had that done to him.

Basketball is the sport of least privacy. Baseball has dugouts in which to hide; football has helmets to be worn. Basketball is a T-shirt and shorts. Insults — trash talk — are constant. You handle it, or you try another activity.

What the Warriors tried, however, was honesty.

No denials, no attempts at cover-ups. Let’s get this fixed and, as Kerr said, move forward.

Yet if what’s in the news is any indication, that journey will not be an easy one.

The media (blush) isn’t going to let this go quickly. Whatever the Warriors do to keep the team strong on the court, there will be a reference to Draymond Green and his punch.

Either they’ll have overcome that mammoth crisis or they’ll have fallen victim to it.

Draymond insisted when he made his apology several days ago that the punch and still unknown problem between him and Poole was embarrassing.

Both players are lucky it wasn’t injurious, one or both ending with a broken bone, Now apparently all we’ll get is hurt pride.

The punch and the TMZ video jolted the Warriors, a franchise where everything invariably runs so smoothly — or so it seems — like, well, a punch to the jaw. They had to do the right thing as much as they had to do what would keep them winners.

“It’s been been an exhaustive process,” Kerr said of the discussion on how to to proceed. “Everything was on the table.”

Now Green effectively may be off the hook, although definitely he’ll be on everyone’s radar.