Draymond Green was ejected two minutes into the third quarter Monday night, and Golden State still found a way to beat the Phoenix Suns 116-113. The dismissal, his first this season, came after consecutive technical fouls and turned a tight game into a scramble for control.
Stephen Curry said the ejection changed the temperature of the night, adding that Green “lit a fire in all of us and we had to respond, so I’m glad we did.” The Warriors did respond, and by the end of the game the ejection looked less like a loss of control than the moment that sharpened it.
That was only part of a messy sequence. Moments before Green was sent off, Khaman Maluach pushed him to the floor in the paint. Green got back up, wrapped his arms around Maluach and threw him down, and Dillon Brooks sprinted in from the side to join the fray. As Brooks approached, Green put a hand on his neck, and both players were assessed technical fouls.
Brooks said afterward that he was trying to cool things down, not add to them. He said Green “did a lot there, fell down, and pushed him at the end of it,” before adding that he was “just trying to deescalate it.” Maluach framed the sequence differently, calling it a basketball play and saying Green was simply playing. However it is described, the possession turned into the kind of clash that stops a game cold and hangs over everything that follows.
The noise did not stop there. With 7:26 remaining, tempers flared again as players pushed and shoved until security personnel stepped in. Miles Bridges was hit with a technical after he ran to the baseline area and pushed Charles Bassey, while Bassey had already kept his arms wrapped around Jalen Green’s head after their fight for a rebound under the basket.
For Golden State, the impact showed in the score and in the reaction on the bench. Brandin Podziemski said, “I loved it. It fueled our team.” Green’s ejection was the 23rd of his career, and with three technicals already this season and 182 in his career, the night added another line to a familiar ledger. The league will not be back in action until Nov. 4 after pausing for Tuesday’s Election Day, so this one will sit for a few days as the last image of the game: Green out early, the fight still boiling, and the Warriors somehow winning anyway.
