Monday night’s Game 2 between the Kings and Warriors in Sacramento ended with a 114-106 win for the home team to give them a 2-0 series lead. The fourth quarter was tense, with both teams trading leads and runs, but the Kings made their best push late, thanks in part to a mid-quarter ejection that saw Draymond Green get tossed for stomping on Domantas Sabonis’ chest after the Kings’ big man grabbed at Green’s ankle.
Green was hit with a Flagrant 2 while Sabonis got a technical, and without Green on the floor, the Kings could seemingly get just about anything they wanted offensively. After the game, Green explained that his frustration with getting grabbed in back-to-back games, noting Monk grabbed him in Game 1, and said “my foot has to land somewhere.”
On Inside the NBA, Shaq empathized with Green with an all-time quote, saying “I’d do the same thing,” before willingly admitting it was a “dirty play.”
“One bad play begets another,” Shaq said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not gonna sit up here and be a hypocrite, I’d do the same thing. Don’t be grabbin at me, because, what am I going to do? Like if I stay there and just try to run forward, I fall. You gotta get em up off you. And if you’re up off of you and you’re in the way, you might get stomped on. Was it a dirty play? Of course it was a dirty play. … Just don’t grab me, and that wouldn’t happen.”
Kenny Smith then delivered a great line with “If I grab you and you hit me with a chair…it’s just excessive,” as he tried to explain that this wasn’t simply and eye for an eye situation. Meanwhile Chuck egged Shaq on as the big fella tried to get someone to grab his leg for an on-set demonstration of all his options, with Barkley asking if he can stomp Shaquille.