Counterpoint: Draymond Green Should Be Suspended for Kicking Steven Adams

" Draymond Green kicks Steven Adams right in the unmentionables pic.twitter.com/A87OmD2pDq — Kenny Ducey (@KennyDucey) May 23, 2016 "

The biggest story in sports this morning is whether Draymond Green should be suspended for Tuesday night’s Game 4 versus OKC for kicking Steven Adams in the groin for the second time this series. Earlier, my boss Jason McIntyre weighed in:

"The kicked looked as if it had some intent, but you can’t suspend Green here. This isn’t some end-of-the-bench scrub sent in to be a hitman. You suspend Green and you can hand the Thunder the series."

McIntyre noted that Green and Steve Kerr denied that there was intent on the play. While it’s impossible to know what’s going through someone else’s mind in the heat of the moment, when you look at the replay over and over it becomes pretty clear that the motion was not involuntary. Should he be put in jail? No. Should he be disciplined by having to sit out a key game for his team? Yeah, probably.

While Green’s first instance of going after Adams’ gonads in the series may have been incidental, this one was not. It was also Green’s second flagrant foul of these playoffs — remember the WWE move he hit Michael Beasley with as time expired in Game 3 of the Rockets series?

This was less forceful than Green’s latest kick to Adams’ nether region, but these incidents accumulate.

McIntyre’s argument that you can’t suspend Green because he’s important to the Warriors does not hold water for me. Suspensions should hurt your team; otherwise what’s the deterrent against squaring up and kicking your opponent in the balls? We live in a society.