Judo Chump – Draymond Green powerfully channels his inner Gracie

Draymond Green has been a fixture in the NBA since 2012, won NBA championships and had a ton of impressive highlights in his basketball career.

So why is a veritable Online Karate Magazine™ talking about him today? Glad you (didn’t) ask. It turns out Green is not a stranger to certain elements of unarmed violence. And this week, we saw what is perhaps his most evolved instance of that to date.

Rudy Gobert begs someone to get Draymond Green off of him

Draymond Green appears to have had something personal going into this week’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. After a scuffle two between players of opposing sides, Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert had the misfortune of attempting to either separate both parties or get involved further. Too bad we won’t get to find out what was going to happen there, because Draymond decided to subdue that man with extreme prejudice.

Gobert interjects and Draymond immediately goes for him and only him by snaking his right arm around his neck and dragging that man into the oddest-looking choke i’ve seen in a long time. Rudy goes from confident athlete to “man who appears to be drowning on land” in a split second as the faces of disparate struggles are neatly one behind the other.

Just look at Rudy’s arm, man. That’s the “Where’s the manager” energy that was needed in the moment.

No love for Rudy, either

As expected, this resulted in ejections and disciplinary action. Draymond let go and Rudy once again contributed to the typical misguided American ideas of the soft Frenchman. The entirety of this particular fight was a on-sided hold that didn’t even look like a secure choke. More than anything, this just looks more like some personal hatred spilling over.

And the internet appears to agree:

And not too many people are being sympathetic towards Rudy, either.

For those that forgot, this is in reference to a moment that made Gobert rather infamous in the early days of the pandemic.

Not Draymond’s first rodeo

Now look, we’ve covered things like this before. Athletes in non-combat sports that decide to start a fight? It rarely looks good. In fact, it usually looks terrible. In fact, sometimes it’s the non-athlete incidents that have better technique and style.

And I highlight that part specifically because there’s just something about basketball players always having the most bowling-shoe ugly fights in all of sportsdom. Personally, I think it’s just that the mechanics that they train their bodies for to excel at basketball just don’t translate to having good form in the arena of hand to hand combat.

As noted before Green, has been in some pretty ugly incidents and accused of some pretty horrendous flagrant violations in the past. Here he is attempting to nullify Steven Adams’ chances at having children:

And here he is going full Armor King on Arvydas Sabonis’ kid. I am old, and I refuse to call him anything other than his father’s son.

My man even got his own highlight reel of incidents like this. Who else in the modern NBA has that?

You’d think that much like in hockey, there’d be some sort of action to discourage this. But it’s not from a lack of trying.

No need for any of this

Basketball fights are less frequent these days, and that’s for various and very good reasons. The fines aren’t worth it, the suspensions can end up affecting the winning chances for teammates, and the fights themselves look turrible.

In fact, the only good NBA fight that comes to mind was the late Kobe Bryant getting pieced up by Chris Childs, of my formerly beloved Knicks.

Childs knew where he was. Pushes off with the head, Kobe hits him with the elbow. Childs decides to go all-out and whipped out the mamba repellent with the 1-2.

“So, uh… what now?”

Aside from the ejections resulting from the fracas, no suspensions or fines have been issued as of the time of this writing. That said, I’d just like to urge more basketball players to please, pretty please with sugar on top, stop fighting.

Not just because it’s bad for morale, but because you guys look horrendous at it. It solves nothing and everyone end up looking dumb.

Victor Rodriguez

Victor Rodriguez has been a writer and podcaster for Bloody Elbow since 2015. He started his way as a lowly commenter and moderator to become the miscreant he is now. He often does weekly bits on fringe martial arts items across the globe, oddball street combat pieces, previews, analysis, and some behind-the-scenes support. He has trained in wrestling, Karate, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and the occasional Muay Thai and Judo lesson here and there. Victor has also been involved with acting and audio editing projects. He lives in Pennsylvania where he plays way too many video games and is an S-rank dad.

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