Adams takes kick from Green below the belt. Draymond Green gets fouled by Steven Adams and kicks Adams below the belt, which earns Green a flagrant-1. |--| Brendan Haywood joins Scott Van Pelt to explain why he thinks Draymond Green should be suspended. Will Draymond Green be suspended for Game 4. Review may not help his case. The more Draymond Green talked, the more difficult it was to determine exactly what his defense was. |--| Temporary insanity would've worked better. |--| It was either an accidental loss of body control and spatial awareness, or a momentary lapse of judgment that could cost the defending champion Golden State Warriors dearly. |--| Did Green kick Steven Adams in the groin on purpose while getting fouled in the second quarter of the Oklahoma City Thunder's 133-105 annihilation of the defending champs on Sunday night. |--| "I'm not trying to kick somebody in the midsection," Green said. "I'm sure he wants to have kids one day; I'm not trying to end that on the basketball court. That doesn't make sense.". Neither did Green's meandering explanation(s) for what happened. |--| "I brought the ball over the top this way, he fouled me, my leg went up," Green said. "I know my core's not strong enough to stop my leg halfway from wherever it was going.". Here comes explanation No. |--| "Honestly, I didn't know I hit him," Green said. "I walked to the 3-point line and slapped everybody's hands and I turned around and he was on the floor. And I was like, 'What happened?'". Green said he looked at teammate Andrew Bogut, who rolled his eyes when he saw the replay. |--| "So I went and looked at the replay like, 'Uh-oh,'" Green said. |--| Uh-oh, indeed. |--| Are you ready for explanation No. Plausible deniability. |--| "I don't think I'll get suspended since I don't know how anyone could possibly say I did that on purpose, regardless of the way it may look," Green said. |--| Translation: You got nothing on me. |--| Here's the thing: Green is probably right. No matter how many times you watch and re-watch the play, and no matter how much you slow it down and watch it frame-by-frame, the video doesn't reveal what we'll never know: What was going on in Green's head when his shin and foot made contact with Adams' private parts with 5:57 left in the second quarter. |--| What the video shows is pretty damning, in my opinion -- though perhaps not damning enough to suspend an All-Star for a game in the Western Conference finals. |--| Watch the play. Green drives on Adams, jump-stops, and spins off his right shoulder. Adams reaches in and ties Green up, knocking the ball loose. Both of Green's feet are still on the floor. |--| At this point, Green exaggerates his shooting motion to accentuate the contact and ensure that it's a shooting foul (which it was ruled to be). Whether his right leg swinging forward violently was a natural part of Green's shooting motion, or whether he gave it a little extra oomph given the history of skirmishes between the two, is up for interpretation. |--| "I mean it's happened before," Adams said, referring to Green catching him in the groin with a knee in Game 2 -- contact that appeared more incidental than Sunday night's incident. |--| Asked if Green should be suspended, Adams said, "That's not my call, mate. I was more concerned with other things at the time.". There was a peculiar aspect to the replay review on the floor, which happened about 10 feet from where I was sitting. As referee Scott Foster watched the replay with a headset on to communicate with the replay center, flanked by Zach Zarba, the other official, Tony Brothers, appeared to say something to Warriors coach Steve Kerr. I didn't hear what Brothers said, but it caused Kerr to lose his mind and start yelling at Foster, who put the headset on and looked at the play again. |--| The final ruling: Flagrant foul, penalty 1. No ejection. Things went pretty badly for the Warriors from that point on, anyway, as they were outscored 85-65 the rest of the way. |--| Whether or not there's enough evidence to suspend an important player for such an important game without absolute proof, here is what league officials are not going to like about the play from Green's perspective when they review it on Monday: The pause between the personal foul by Adams that knocked the ball loose, and the sudden acceleration of Green's leg after the play was dead. |--| They look like two separate actions. And Green's leg action looks unnaturally swift considering the circumstances. |--| "We have that first foul where Draymond's going to shoot two shots," Joe Borgia, the NBA's senior vice president of replay and referee operations, said on NBA TV. "Now we have dead-ball contact where Draymond's leg comes forward [and] contacts.