Steve Kerr is not having an easy week. After dealing with Draymond Green and Jordan Poole having a fight in practice, the Warriors and Kerr thought they could move on to repairing the relationship between the rotational players. However, a video of the incident leaked to TMZ which has since put the Warriors at the center of this situation.
All the Warriors had to worry about was getting Draymond and Poole to co-exist again, but the video leaking has made their task much harder. Not only do they need to work towards reconciliation while knowing the entire world has seen what Draymond did to Poole, but they also need to figure out how the video went from a private practice into the hands of TMZ. Steve Kerr spoke about the same during preseason games.
"I'm concerned about both. They're both a problem."
Steve Kerr on the leaked video and the Dray-JP incident itself. He adds there’s no clarity yet on when Draymond will return. pic.twitter.com/sS06s6IVSq
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) October 10, 2022
“I’m concerned about both. They’re both a problem. The incident was a problem, the leak was a problem. I don’t rank these things. My job as a coach is to prepare us to play and make sure we can put the best team on the floor as possible. That job requires a ton of navigation and it’s very tricky. And it’s made much trickier when there is a leak because everything is out in the open. The job is to handle everything behind the scenes with conversations and then when it’s out in the open, answering questions like this one. But we are going to get through all of this and we’re going to be OK. They both concern me.”
As long as the Warriors can remedy this situation, it’s fine. The leak is the larger issue, as it creates a lack of trust within the organization. Whoever leaked it will have consequences for doing so, but any information on the leaker is yet to come out.
Can Draymond Green And Jordan Poole Play Together Again?
Draymond’s actions severely hurt his chances of getting a contract extension with the Warriors, whereas Poole seems to have further dug his heels into the team. While neither has signed extensions right now, everyone knows that Poole is going to be secured by the Warriors while Draymond might be leaving as a free agent.
In the meantime, they need to be teammates for an 82-game regular season and then be able to win 16 playoff games together. That will be a challenge given the frayed chemistry, but the Warriors have been winning championships for nearly a decade now. If they can’t move past this, no franchise could do it.
