Draymond Green has a WWE championship belt now, which is perfect
As excellent as he is in his current job, as the two-way playmaking power forward of the newly minted NBA champion Golden State Warriors, I can’t help but feel like he might have missed his true calling as a top-shelf wrestling heel. Sure, his combination of size and quickness would translate wonderfully to the squared circle, but it’s the other stuff that would make him a perfect bad guy.
There’s his well-established talents on the mic, anchored by the ability to cut a killer promo (hey there, Dahntay Jones!). There’s his willingness to talk all sorts of smack about multiple opponents, keeping a wide variety of simultaneous angles alive and maintaining his spot on the most-hated list in multiple cities. There’s his talent for getting under the skin of opponents, and opposing fan bases, and opposing coaches. And there’s his comfort with a style of play that straddles the line between hard-nosed and dirty, and sometimes just goes clear to the other side of the line, depending on how much the refs happen to catch. (Draymond feels like a guy who’d appreciate a good Bobby Heenan quote: “Cheating is only cheating when you get caught, and bragging isn’t bragging when you can do it.”)
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He’s got all the tools. Now, apparently, he’s got the hardware, too.
It feels pretty perfect that Green is following in the footsteps of the great Rasheed Wallace here. And, come to think of it, it feels even more perfect that he’s rocking a brand new strap after outlasting LeBron James in the Finals. Remember, “The King” received a WWE title belt of his own last year, while still a member of the Miami Heat, from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — James went on to give all of his Heat teammates their own belts, too — and as “The Nature Boy” has taught us, to be The Man, you’ve got to beat The Man. No word yet on whether noted leisure enthusiast Green has, like Flair, spent more money since Game 6 on spilled liquor than his haters have made.
(A brief aside: Yes, the San Antonio Spurs actually beat the belt-holding iteration of The Man in last summer’s Finals, and thanks to Dray’s old buddies, the Los Angeles Clippers, Golden State and San Antonio never crossed paths this postseason. But if you want to go by NBA Championship Belt rules, the New Orleans Pelicans held the gold after the regular season, and the Dubs knocked them off in the first round. So Dray’s claim to the belt seems pretty solid.)
The best part of it all? Green’s already got a gimmick. It’s right there in his Twitter handle. And with Money Green expected to come into enough scratch to make Ted DiBiase blush in restricted free agency, I can already see one veteran heel lining up for a shot at Draymond’s title. It might not necessarily be a natural main-event successor to this year’s Finals, but if Dray’s truly a fighting champion, it could make for an interesting enough storyline to pass the time between now and the start of the season.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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