Report: ‘Big complaint’ around NBA is that Draymond Green ‘gets away with too much’

Jesse Cinquini
4 Min Read
Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images

In Thursday night’s Game 2 of the second-round series between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors, Warriors star Draymond Green picked up yet another technical foul in the 2025 NBA Playoffs.

Green was handed a technical foul after he hit Timberwolves big man Naz Reid in the face. That marked his fifth technical in these playoffs, and he now needs to be careful how he proceeds if he wants to avoid a suspension. He’s just two techs away from an automatic one-game suspension.

On top of his five technical fouls, he has a pair of flagrant fouls to his name as well. If he were to pick up two more flagrant points, he would be also suspended.

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst has reported that there are people across the NBA who have been complaining that Green gets “too much leeway” in certain instances.

“He’s got five technicals and two flagrants in nine playoff games,” Windhorst said. “He probably should have more technicals. It was a restraint shown by the referees. By the way, that’s a big complaint across the league that Draymond gets away with stuff after he commits a flagrant and after he commits a technical and sometimes even after he gets five fouls.

“There’s a belief that Draymond actually gets too much leeway. This is not my words. This is what people tell me. They say he gets away with too much stuff because the referees don’t want to be the one who ejects him or calls a second flagrant on him because they know that there’s going to be an onslaught.”

Not only did Green pick up a tech in Game 2 against Minnesota, but he also had a rough game shooting the ball. Green attempted six 3-pointers and misfired on all but one of them. He also finished 3-for-10 from the field. To his credit, he did impact the game in other ways per usual.

Green has long been one of the NBA’s more widely recognized pests, and he has a real knack for getting under the skin of his opponents. Plenty of times, Green’s antics have played to the Warriors’ advantage.

After all, the Warriors have won four titles since the start of the 2014-15 season, and Green was part of every one of those championship teams.

But on Thursday, the Warriors picked up their largest loss of the 2025 NBA Playoffs so far in terms of point differential. Golden State came up short by 24 points, and the team really missed star Stephen Curry’s presence on the offensive side of the ball, as the Warriors mustered only 93 points as a team.

Green will try to put together a bounce-back performance and lead the Warriors to a victory in Saturday’s Game 3 at Chase Center.

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Jesse is an aspiring sports journalist that has previously worked as a staff writer at SB Nation’s CelticsBlog and The Knicks Wall.