Draymond Green’s return to the court was supposed to be a strictly joyous occasion. It mostly was — the Warriors beat the Wizards 126-112 after all — but things got weird postgame.
Green announced he would not be holding a traditional media session at the podium and declined to take questions. He said the reason was that he didn’t feel he could trust the media, leading many to speculate that Green was upset with a particular story.
He confirmed that with reporters after the fact, citing a piece in The Athletic that he felt unfairly characterized his absence from the team during his injury.
The whole thing was a bit odd. Marcus Thompson, who also writes for The Athletic, was asked to give his take on the situation when he joined Murph & Mac on Tuesday.
Thompson used the opportunity to explain that he thinks player-media beefs are silly, and not something he really has any time for when it comes to his responsibilities as a journalist.
“I don’t really have any feelings about it,” Thompson said on KNBR. “Draymond can do whatever he wants, it’s Draymond Green. Everyone is allowed to feel and operate how they so choose.
“It’s a very common thing to get on the media. It’s par for the course, it’s not anything unique. Everybody is always ripping the media, we’re always doing something wrong, we’re the problem. I’m very used to it. It’s not that entertaining.
“We’re not the story. It’s not about us. We’re not important, we’re but waiters serving information. I’m not into this whole idea of ‘Ohhh, we got our feelings hurt.’ Like nobody cares. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”
Thompson explained that he was taught that a journalist should be a conduit between the player and the reader, rather than a part of the story. In his mind, whatever a player has to say about the media is their prerogative, and he doesn’t feel a need or duty to respond in any direct fashion.
“[Green] said that, that’s what he wanted to say,” Thompson continued. “My thing is I’m old school. We ain’t the story, that’s how I was raised. We don’t talk about what the media said. If there’s a media person that has an issue, he needs to deal with that on his own. When it’s my turn, that’s what I’m going to say. I’m not the story, it doesn’t matter. Say whatever you want to say.
“I’m here to do a job. I’m paid to get information from them.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch Murph & Mac weekdays from 6 – 10 a.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.