A minor shouting match during Saturday night’s game between the Golden State Warriors and Detroit Pistons has turned into quite the back-and-forth between players from both teams.
As both teams headed for the locker room, Detroit’s Rodney McGruder approached Golden State’s Juan Toscano-Anderson, and the two started jawing a bit. Nothing further happened, but Klay Thompson said McGruder was “probably mad” that he “might be out the league soon” on the NBC Sports Bay Area telecast.
Klay defending his teammates on the mic pic.twitter.com/xgTUxwcP36
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) January 31, 2021
Draymond Green took things further after the game, mockingly referring to McGruder as “f–king tough guy Rodney” and adding that “no one scared of no damn Rodney McGruder.”
Green indicated that McGruder was trying to defend teammate Wayne Ellington. Ellington had his say on Sunday, and he was not at all impressed with how Thompson and Green handled the incident. He defended McGruder’s character, said Toscano-Anderson was the one who started everything, and said it was “very unprofessional” to remark on McGruder’s career. He also said that Green’s postgame comments were “fake tough guy stuff.”
Here's a transcript of #Pistons Wayne Ellington's comments on the Rodney McGruder incident last night.
He stuck up for his guy: "I'm only going to talk about that situation once and then put it behind us. I think it's unfair for those guys to attack my man like that." pic.twitter.com/L4U181KNPk
— Rod Beard (@detnewsRodBeard) January 31, 2021
The Pistons and Warriors do not meet again this season, so in terms of on-court conflict, this is finished for now. That said, Green is pretty famous for not letting things go, so it’s doubtful he’ll let Ellington have the last word here.
