NBA player Draymond Green is one of the best defensive players of his generation and a huge reason the Golden State Warriors have won four NBA championships since 2015.
As good as his play has been for the Dubs over the last decade, his big mouth has gotten him into more than a little trouble. Suspensions, flagrant fouls, and arguments with referees and players have made Green the league’s preeminent goon.
He also apparently can’t take a dose of his own medicine, even if the trash talk isn’t actually offensive.
During the Warriors’ victory over the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday night, Green got into a heated exchange with a fan courtside who reportedly kept calling him “Angel Reese”.
Reese, a power forward for the Chicago Sky, has become synonymous with low offensive output, rather than her — and Chicago Bulls fans of Dennis Rodman will appreciate this — all-time ability to clean the glass. Reese holds the WNBA record for most rebounds per game in a season with 13.1 per game in 2024.
Related
One would think that using Reese’s name as an insult would be counterintuitive, especially when it’s being directed at a player who plays a lot like her in the men’s game.
Green has never been an offensive savant; rather, he has organized the Warriors on defense and done the little things that help the team win while Stephen Curry does the scoring. Reese and Green are both great players, but Green seemed to ignore this and took the fan’s joke as an insult because of the gender of the person he was being compared to.
Green told reporters after the game, “He just kept calling me a woman . . . It was a good joke at first, but you can’t keep calling me a woman. I got four kids, one on the way. You can’t keep calling me a woman.”
It will never cease to amaze me how offended men get at the thought of being feminine, or even people comparing them to a woman who participates in the same activities as they do. The fan was obviously trying to jab at Green’s lack of scoring ability as he shot only 3 of 13 from the field and finished with eight points in the game. Reese has long been a meme on social media for basketball players who are only able to score off their own misses.
Green should have stated that he was offended at that part of the trash talk. Immediately going to the part about Reese’s gender shows how insecure men are in their masculinity, especially in professional sports. Sports like basketball and football are often a toxic environment and a breeding ground for men to say and think disrespectful things about women.
The type of sexism that led Green to want to fight the fan also reflects a concern of homophobia in men’s pro sports. Being gay is often associated with femininity, which in turn is tied to the idea of weakness and fragility. Homophobic men disempower gay people because they think of them the same way they think of women: less than them.
Being compared to Angel Reese is the type of light trash talk that a grizzled veteran like Draymond Green should let roll right off his back. Yet if you have no respect for women’s basketball, or women in general, the claim turns into fighting words.
Subscribe to the Outsports newsletter to keep up with your favorite out athletes, inspiring LGBTQ sports stories, and more.