Draymond Green's Feud with Paul Pierce Is Justified, but It's Time to Move On

The conundrum of Draymond Green is that his true value to the Golden State Warriors is nearly impossible to quantify.

It's easy to look at his stats and conclude he's nothing more than a capable rotation player. Heading into Tuesday night, he had a per-game scoring average of just 10.1 points. He collects 8.1 rebounds a night. Only 32.1 percent of his three-point attempts connect.

These are not elite or even exceptional numbers, yet they encapsulate the Draymond Green Experience no better than a five-page foreword explains a Dickens novel.

Throw in his penchant for technical fouls and flailing into other players' nether regions and it's easy to understand why Green can come off as problematic even when he's most likely in the right, such as in his lingering beef with Paul Pierce.

The Los Angeles Clippers reserve forward, deep in the endgame of a 19-year career that will land him in the Hall of Fame, came hard at Green during the Warriors' 123-113 win on Feb. 23, claiming the All-Star couldn't contain Blake Griffin. It was an amusing counterfactual, given that Green has shown an effective ability to disrupt Griffin's game. But so these things go in the NBA. Talking trash has never required a logic filter.

Green retaliated in the moment, as he often does, needling Pierce on his seemingly endless goodbye tour. "You thought you was Kobe?!" he could be heard shouting over courtside microphones.

"At the end of the day, I understand that if you're an OG or you're in the Hall of Fame, there's a certain respect level that comes with that," Green explained on his recent UNINTERRUPTED podcast. "But that don't give you the right to say whatever you want to say to me."

Green then implied Pierce's career was unimpressive until Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett arrived in the summer of 2007 and helped the Celtics win a long-overdue championship.

Pierce may have fired the first salvo last week, but Green went full bore in retaliation.

This is what Green does and who he is. He is the emotional center of gravity that holds the Warriors together both in the locker room and on the court. He says what's on his mind, be that to teammates, the coaching staff, referees or (as is most often the case) opponents.

But the idea that Green crossed some boundary of decency is comical. And the notion that he somehow hasn't earned the right to defend himself against unsubstantiated mockery is just as laughable.

Consider this: Green has won an NBA championship. He's won an Olympic gold medal. He's placed second in the Defensive Player of the Year voting each of the past two seasons and has, at worst, a 50-50 shot (along with Utah's Rudy Gobert) at finally winning the award this year. All this from a second-round tweener who went 35th overall in 2012 and wasn't given a chance to crack Golden State's rotation until David Lee went down in training camp two seasons later.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

Today, the one-time chubby kid from Saginaw, Michigan, may well be the second-most valuable player on a team sitting at 50-9 entering Tuesday's game against Washington. And his supposedly unimpressive stats? He's one of only 10 players this season to reach those benchmarks of 10 points, eight boards and 32 percent from long range. Even as a clear runner-up to Kevin Durant, Green is a vital cog who can win games for the Warriors seemingly at will.

At the same time, this escalating battle of words is, at its core, a distraction. In the case of the NBA Finals or thereabouts, these kinds of circuses will percolate regardless of other influences. An incredulous Russell Westbrook can turn a routine presser into a national story before you can even tweet it.

That's not where the Warriors are yet. The madness of May has yet to take hold. In fact, there are nearly two dozen games remaining before the playoffs begin, and in many ways, Golden State is a work in progress. Its offense still stagnates at weird times. The defense often looks uninspired. The team's fourth quarters leave much to be desired.

So while the Warriors may remain the odds-on favorite to snag the Western Conference's No. 1 seed for a third consecutive year, this tiff with Pierce is a distraction—and this Warriors organization considers distractions a viral contagion that is to be stamped out at any cost. Distractions (often of a greater degree) were far more common until Steve Kerr took over as head coach three seasons ago and were near-daily before the new ownership group arrived in 2010.

It's understandable that some Warriors fans might lapse into a kind of Pavlovian tic when issues that aren't strictly centered on the business of playing basketball leap to the fore. Yes, it's admirable that Green stood up for himself; it was even necessary. Trying to smother Green's innate desire to clap back would be to deny no small measure of his rightful agency.

But the sooner this hullabaloo recedes into the background and the Warriors can get back to figuring out how their playoff rotations will tighten, who will take the final shot with three seconds to go and how Green can contain his limbs enough so that he starts every playoff game, the better for all parties in Oakland.

Pierce had his say. Green had his. Now, back to ball.