Draymond Green Gets Brutally Honest About Warriors' Kristaps Porzingis Situation

Forward Draymond Green has been playing center for the Golden State Warriors while center Kristaps Porzingis has been away from the team, and in comments published Friday by The Athletic's Sam Amick, he gave a blunt look at how the locker room sees the situation.

The timing is important, because Green's comments came out Friday, less than an hour before Porzingis announced that he is stepping away from basketball for health reasons.

Green was not reacting to that announcement, since he was talking about a teammate who has been away from the team for most of the fall and a group that decided to keep going without him.

"I don't think anyone in here is sitting around waiting on him to walk through that door," Green said, according to Amick's post on X.

Green also said nobody in the locker room is bashing Porzingis, and that everybody knows he could help the team.

His point was that the Warriors have moved forward with the players they have, and he called it a next-man-up chance for center Charles Bassey and rookie big man Graham Ike.

One line about not worrying over spoiled milk drew some pushback online, and Green later answered critics on Threads by saying people were reading clipped quotes without the full context.

The results say Green is right, since Golden State has won seven straight games since an 0-3 start, most recently a 126-119 overtime win over Orlando on Saturday, and the Warriors are 7-3 and fifth in the Western Conference.

That is a strong stretch for a team with every reason to get distracted.

They have done it with Green starting in the middle and averaging 7.8 assists, while center Al Horford, Bassey and Ike have handled the minutes behind him.

Bassey is averaging 7.1 points in under 12 minutes a game, and he has earned the bigger chance Green was talking about.

Porzingis explained his decision in a statement, but it is not an official retirement, and ESPN's Anthony Slater reported that the Warriors can still use his $20 million salary in a trade before February's deadline and that Porzingis is open to being traded.

With the deadline set for Feb. 11, that gives the front office a real path to add a center without breaking up what is working now.

Green said what most fans were already thinking, and I like that he did it without taking shots at Porzingis, since he even made a point to say Porzingis could help, which is the part that got lost when people only shared the spoiled milk line.

Head coach Steve Kerr has kept his own comments short and wished Porzingis well, and the players seem to be on the same page.

The Warriors host New Orleans at Chase Center on Monday, and guard Will Richard has been ruled out with a UCL tear in his left thumb.

After that comes a trip to Houston on Wednesday, and from what I have seen, this locker room handled a messy situation better than most would.