Draymond Green uses Bam Adebayo-Tyler Herro altercation to get into his own scuffle with Udonis Haslem

If there is one thing capable of uniting pretty much all non-Miami NBA fans, it is the dissing of “Heat Culture.” Problem is, if there is one player that most NBA fans would like to hit the mute button on, it’s Draymond Green. So of course, here comes Draymond Green dissing Heat Culture. The basketball gods are forcing us to choose a side here. 

The layout goes like this: Over the weekend, Bam Adebayo punched Tyler Herro in front of Herro’s AAU team on a makeshift practice court in Las Vegas. Adabayo was allegedly upset over comments Herro made in a private chat, which was subsequently leaked, on Instagram, in which Herro appears to have taken some pretty direct shots at his former Heat teammate. 

Herro also posted the following graphic highlighting Adebayo’s lackluster midrange shooting percentage to his IG account. 

So that’s the gist of the background. Herro went keyboard gangster on Adebayo, who in turn went real gangster on Herro. ESPN unveiled that Herro does not intend to pursue legal action against Adebayo, and so far the NBA hasn’t opened an investigation. So it’s sort of done… except for all the people still talking about it. 

One of those people, unsurprisingly, is Green, who took to his podcast on Sunday to question whether the president of Heat Culture, Udonis Haslem, who was critical of Green when he punched his then-teammate Jordan Poole at practice back in 2022, was going to be equally critical of Adebayo for his similar act (as Green sees it) of friendly fire?

“This is two young guys that Udonis Haslem raised,” Green mentioned of Adebayo and Herro. “And yeah, they’re not on the same team anymore, but if you raised this young guy [Adebayo] in the light of what you was saying about me, and now he punches this other young guy [Herro] that y’all kind of co-raised, are you going to have that same energy?”

You can hear Green’s full comment starting at the 28-minute mark. 

Haslem, of course, heard Green’s remarks and fired right back. With an absolute vengeance. 

“Call it heat culture or what ever you want,” Haslem wrote on social media, “but before I let one player disrespect Spo in front of the squad, cut his legs out and disrupt what 15 other guys tryin to get accomplished, I’ll kick his ass. I owe that to ZO and Tim and Glen and the rest of my OGs.”

So, whose side are we on here? You would think that depends largely on whether you’re a Warriors or Heat fan, but in this case, Haslem probably has a near 100% approval rating in the 305, whereas even in the Bay Area it isn’t quite so cut and dried with Draymond. 

Many Warriors fans have a mixed emotions when it comes to Green, a tentpole figure in the dynasty but also a guy who has played a real role in the tearing down of the very thing he helped build. He has admitted to costing the 73-win Warriors a championship in 2016 because he couldn’t control his temper and got himself suspended for Game 5 of the Finals, which flipped the whole series after the Warriors had gone up 3-1 on the Cavs. 

A few years later he basically tried to emasculate Kevin Durant as a basketball player when he reportedly called him a “b–ch” after a disagreement over Green not passing the ball to Durant at the end of a game. In the huddle, it was unveiled that Green flat-out told Durant to leave, saying the Warriors didn’t need him, and then Durant left the following summer. Then came the Poole punch in 2022, which Steve Kerr later mentioned “destroyed our team.” 

Kerr isn’t wrong. Green has notched more marks in the plus side of the Warriors’ ledger, but he has cost them plenty, too. He went completely off the rails after he punched Poole. There was a point when his career was in genuine jeopardy after he all but choked out Rudy Gobert. Green eventually sought counseling and has gotten himself back in control on the court by better balancing the competitive fire that has always served as both his greatest strength and weakness. 

So why bring up the Poole punch again? Why go back there? Why use something that happened between two guys in Vegas, which has nothing to do with you, to re-litigate your beef with what Haslem mentioned about you three years ago, which, by the way, was warranted. Green has gotten back into a good place on the court by basically learning to lets thing go, to pick the battles that matter. 

Why pick this one? Maybe Green has a point about Haslem, an NBA analyst, not holding others to the same level of public accountability that he did Green, but Haslem also has a point that what Adebayo did to Herro was much different than what Green did to Poole. 

To state the obvious, Adebayo and Herro are no longer teammates. And besides that, this happened on their own time. Not in the middle of practice. Of course, everyone understands that tempers occasionally spill overboard in highly competitive environments, and that Poole punch certainly wasn’t the first time that two teammates have gone to blows. Hell, Steve Kerr is famous for throwing hands with Michael Jordan when the two played for the Bulls in the 90s. 

Green’s was more of an all-out attack, as the footage showed, but whatever. These things happen. Green was rightly criticized because this was hardly a first-time offense. Maybe it was the first time he punched a dude on his own team, but generally speaking, people were pretty much done letting Green’s temper run amok at that point. 

Either way, it was almost four years ago. That Green couldn’t let it continue to lay and just had to inject himself into a situation he had nothing to with is pretty lame. Honestly, nobody wants to hear about Draymond settling scores he lost a long time ago. Just let it go. Green’s podcast is great. There are a lot of awesome conversations that happen on there. The basketball talk is really smart. The Poole case is closed, unless Green feels intent to seize every chance he sees to open it back up.