On outskirts of Desperation Flats, Cavs only hope may be to bait Green again

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Draymond Green has been irked by the latest rash of questions about his deportment, because this is that time of the series, and he's an easy off-day, as they say. His reputation as a player who colors outside the lines, which sits in his stomach like a swelling appendix, is coming back to roost.

Which is interesting, given that he has geared down his level tantrum-age considerably, and is even getting a level of live-and-let-live from the officials who felt compelled to break his impulsive streak earlier in the year.

In short, he is finding out that you are what people say you are until they decide you’re something else. Welcome to Opinion America, where the slogan is always, “The beast must fed.”

But there is a sliver of relevance to the question, although it is being delivered in very non-artful ways. The actual question is this:

Now that the Cleveland Cavaliers have reached the outskirts of Desperation Flats, does he expect LeBron James or some other random Cav to try to bait him into a thing and hope his rep as a reformed red-ass will cause the NBA to use its punitive mood-adjusting tools?

That makes sense, because the Cavs have made almost all the lineup and matchup adjustments there are for their roster to absorb. They enter Game Three of the NBA Finals Wednesday with less hope than they did in 2015 or 2016 because the Warriors have Kevin Durant to go with their already stacked deck, and the Cavs are festooned with a series of players who do one, and occasionally two things, very well, but have none of Golden State’s fuel-injected versatility.

They are, in short, working off the short list of ideas – hoping the Warriors shoot terribly and fall behind early, and/or become intimidated by a loud and understandably noxious crowd. And when we say “understandably noxious,” we mean just like the fans in Oakland, and damned near everywhere else, too.

There is a problem there, though: The Warriors have shot better both from inside and outside the arc in their six road games than their eight home games this postseason, which while a small sample size still speaks readily to the level of play they have achieved in the post Tax Day period.

In other words, the crowd may have to carry a greater share of the load here – at least for those who believe that crowd noise is an actual tangible weapon and not just, as logical people would surmise, the direct byproduct of the home team’s play.

And said crowd will be very much in Green’s grill from the pregame on. Green isn’t likely to respond to that because, well, he’s an adult, but a Cav may decide to jam a stick in his sensibilities, and the officiating crew (probably Monty McCutchen, Ed Malloy and Marc Davis) may take it from there.

These are longer and longer longshots, of course, and Green is not only more bolted down but has an army of interveners at his command. Put another way, I’m not sure that even he would want to have a heated argument with David West, who has seen and heard far more things than Green in his time and has his own rep for accepting no extraneous grief.

So if that’s the question, Green should consider it a legitimate one and take note. If, on the other hand, this has just been a few days of what old-timey journalists used to call bear-baiting, then he’s got a case for being irritated.

But that’s what reputations are – things assigned to you that never go away until you make the issue so old and/or stupid that it isn’t worth bringing up ever again.

I’d give it about three more years.

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