On Wednesday evening, Kelly Oubre and the Philadelphia 76ers took a tough home loss to the Los Angeles Clippers despite leading most of the way and holding Los Angeles star Kawhi Leonard in check for the majority of the evening. Unfortunately for Philadelphia, Leonard caught fire in the final moments of the game, and a last second attempt from Oubre, driving to the basket against Paul George, came up empty.
Despite replay review showing Oubre wouldn’t have gotten the ball off in time, and that George didn’t commit much of a foul anyway, that didn’t stop Oubre from going up to each of the game’s officials right after the buzzer and directing an expletive-laced rant in the direction of their faces, a clip that quickly went viral online.
On Thursday, former 76ers guard Lou Williams took to FanDuel’s Run it Back podcast with Chandler Parsons and Michelle Beadle to drop an interesting perspective on the fallout–or lack thereof–from Oubre’s outburst, referencing Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green in the process.
“So Kelly Oubre doesn’t have a history of this type of thing right? If this is Draymond Green, the world blows up today… This is $25,000 per b*tch without a doubt,” said Williams, per ClutchPoints on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter.
Context matters in these situations
It is likely that if Draymond Green did the same thing that Oubre did in that situation, there probably would have been more of a fallout. Funnily enough, Green did pretty much exactly that during the Warriors’ win over the Orlando Magic just hours before the 76ers’ loss, cursing out an official repeatedly and earning himself an ejection from that contest, one that made some fans (ESPN’s Jay Williams) curious if Stephen Curry lacked the leadership skills to keep 34 year-old Green’s emotions in check.
It’s very likely that if Oubre had gone on his rant during the course of the game, and not during its conclusion, that he would have found himself in the exact situation that Green did.
But even so, to Lou Williams’ point, there are double standards for Draymond Green because he has created them throughout the course of his Hall of Fame, but controversial, career. Green’s antics go far back, including to the 2016 NBA playoffs, in which he kicked Oklahoma City Thunder big man Steven Adams in the land down under during the Western Conference Finals, and then earned himself an ejection by tripping LeBron James during the NBA Finals.
In the eight years since, Green has done nothing to help shore up his reputation as a loose cannon on the court. Earlier this year, Green was suspended for several weeks after taking a cheap shot at Phoenix Suns’ big man Jusuf Nurkic. Meanwhile, the biggest incident of Oubre’s career was a shove he took at Boston Celtics forward Kelly Olynyk back during the 2017 playoffs, which was a direct relation to a dirty screen that Olynyk had set.
The point being, yes, context matters in these situations.
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