Draymond Green is not usually the guy to calm nerves, but his latest defense of Jaylen Brown might be exactly what Philadelphia 76ers fans needed to hear.
Brown has been taking heat since landing in a trade to the Sixers, with plenty of chatter suggesting the relationship between him and Jayson Tatum in Boston had gone sour. Green pushed back hard on that idea on the latest episode of The Draymond Green Show, arguing that not every teammate relationship has to look the same away from the court.
“That [expletive] doesn’t matter. We all have different lives.
Jaylen Brown has no kids, and to my understanding, is single. Jayson Tatum has two kids and is in a relationship.
That right there alone sets the stage to live two completely different lives,” Green said.
He kept going, making the point that distance off the floor does not automatically mean a problem on it.
“Does not mean they didn’t like each other. Does not mean they hate each other.
It simply means we don’t carry the same interests off the basketball court. They just couldn’t carry the same interests off the basketball court.
None of you people who sit and judge hang out with every colleague that you work with. But for some reason, when it comes to basketball players, if two guys don’t hang out, it’s a big issue?”
That message should sound familiar in Philadelphia. The Sixers have already lived through a version of this with Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons before Tyrese Maxey became a two-time All-Star.
As their careers with the team progressed, the two stars moved in different directions off the floor. Embiid wasn’t into nightlife the same way, and he became a father in 2020.
Simmons, meanwhile, lived a different life, and the speculation about a possible rift became a constant topic throughout the 2020-2021 season.
Philadelphia didn’t move on from Simmons fast enough to avoid the fallout. The situation eventually reached a boiling point, and the tension lingered for half of the 2021-2022 NBA season.
That’s why the Brown-Tatum noise can hit a nerve for Sixers fans. But Green, who said he has been playing with Steph Curry for 14 years, offered a reminder that close partnership on the court does not require constant contact off it.
“Love Steph Curry to death. That’s my brother.
We’ve been to hell and back,” Green explained. “We don’t hang out all the time off the basketball court.
By the way, during the summertime, we don’t talk much at all. Every now and then I check in with him, every now and then he checks in with me.
We don’t talk a bunch!”
The bottom line is simple: teams can win without their stars living the same life away from basketball. Green’s point is that Brown and Tatum not hanging out does not automatically mean anything deeper, and for the Sixers, that should be enough to ease some of the concern.
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