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Earlier this week, Draymond Green discussed the recent controversy surrounding James Dolan and Knicks legend Charles Oakley. On his “Dray Day” podcast, Green compared Dolan’s issue with Oakley and his criticisms of the organization to that of a slave master’s mentality.
Green told listeners, “You doing it for me, it’s all good. You doing it against me – you speaking out against my organization – it’s not good anymore? That’s a slave mentality. A slave master mentality. That’s ridiculous.”
As a result, many came forward with criticisms of their own. Although many people agreed with Green’s opinion, others disagreed and disapproved of Green’s slavery comparison. Among the opposed was none other than the Hall of Famer, Sir Charles Barkley.
“That is just stupid,” Barkley said of Green’s comments to ESPN. “I don’t think you ever use basketball analogies to compare to slavery when guys are making 20, 30 million dollars a year. I just think that is stupid.”
However, Green has since clarified his comments regarding Dolan and the slave master mentality, but maintained the Knicks owner was in the wrong in the Oakley situation.
“Number one, I never said James Dolan has a slave master mentality,” Green said. “I said when you look at something and someone is doing something for someone and all of a sudden they can’t anymore, that falls under the slave mentality.”
“…I can’t say James Dolan is a racist. I don’t know James Dolan. Honestly, if he walked past me right now, I wouldn’t know who he is,” he added.
“I thought some of the things said about Charles Oakley — from James Dolan, from the New York Knicks’ Twitter handle – some of the things said about Oakley was wrong, and I still feel that way. However, I think that was a mistake by Dolan, that was a mistake by the Knicks. Then I think I followed up and made the same mistake they made about what they said about Oakley, about how it came off about what I said about James Dolan.”
“Like I said, I don’t know [Dolan]. I could never say he’s a racist or he has a slave owner’s mentality. I don’t know if he has that. That’s just how that situation looked to me from the outside looking in. And so that came off the wrong way, and it wasn’t what I meant by it.
“But what I meant by it, is there should be a respect level between players, ownership, staff, people who work in the organization, the league office, former players. It’s a family. And I think there should always be a respect level that is kept amongst the family, and I don’t think that situation it was necessarily kept.”
