Draymond Green finally spoke about the incident that happened two years ago when he stepped on the chest of a fallen Domantas Sabonis during a playoff game between the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings.
That stunt earned Green a one-game suspension from the league, but during his appearance on a recent stream by Kai Cenat, Dray let Kai and his crew review the play frame by frame so that they will see what the NBA cameras refused to highlight during the replays when it happened in real time.
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“He grabbed my ankle, bruh. You got to get him back,” said Green. “Why is he holding on to my ankle? Yeah he did. You can’t hold my ankle. I’ll step on you.”
Replays show that Sabonis really grabbed Dray’s ankle
For context, Sabonis was not the first Kings player to grab Green’s leg. In the series opener, Green claimed that Kings guard Malik Monk also grabbed his leg, but the referees let it go. So when it happened again in Game 2, he made sure that the refs looked at the replay so they wouldn’t only see Dray’s stomp and Domas’s grabbing onto his ankle.
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After the referees sorted things out, Green was assessed a flagrant foul 2 for stepping on Sabonis’ chest with excess force. Meanwhile, Sabonis was called for a technical foul for grabbing Green’s leg as he fell on the play. However, because of Draymond’s history, the league handed him a one-game suspension, which he served in Game 3 of that series.
“Look, he got my ankle wrapped. Look, slow it down,” he told Cenat to play the video slower. “Look, he got my whole ankle. That’s crazy. They don’t want you to see that part. They just want you to see the stomp.”
Shaq took Draymond’s side
While many people criticized Green and said it was wrong to step on someone’s chest, he felt vindicated after he got the backing of Shaquille O’Neal, who said that he would have done what Draymond did to Sabonis to protect himself. Shaq, however, admitted that it was a dirty play.
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“I’m not gonna sit up here and be a hypocrite. I would have done the same thing,” O’Neal said on Inside the NBA. “Don’t be grabbing me, because what am I gonna do?” O’Neal continued. “If I stay there and just try to run forward, I’ll fall. You gotta get him up off you. And if you get up off me and you in the way, you might get stomped on. Was it a dirty play? Of course it was a dirty play. But, hey, don’t grab me, and this won’t happen.”
It’s hard to justify what Draymond did to Domantas, and his actions were very wrong – or dirty, as Shaq called it. But you can argue that he was provoked. O’Neal summarized it perfectly: the incident wouldn’t have happened if Domas had not grabbed Dray’s ankle first. However, the lesson here is that you can’t right a wrong with another mistake.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Sep 10, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.