James, Green trade tough talk

LeBron wants league office to probe Game 4 incident

CLEVELAND — Draymond Green finds himself in another thorny playoff situation.

The Golden State forward tangled verbally and physically with Cleveland’s LeBron James during the fourth quarter of the Warriors’ 108-97 victory in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday, with the Cavaliers star saying it all went too far.

“Draymond just said something that I don’t agree with,” James said. “I’m all cool with the competition. I’m all fine with that, but some of the words that came out of his mouth were a little bit overboard, and being a guy with pride, a guy with three kids and a family, things of that nature, some things just go

overboard.”

Green, who kicked Oklahoma City’s Steven Adams in the groin area during the Western Conference finals and was fined $25,000 a day later for that play, was asked what he and James were saying to one another.

“Stuff that’s said on the court,” Green said. “You’ll never get it from me.”

James said he and his teammates reviewed video of a sequence where it appeared that Green hit the fourtime NBA Most Valuable Player in the groin area. James believes the NBA will take a look at the play.

“I didn’t see it, no,” Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue said. “Did he do it?”

That’s up to the NBA to decide now — or at least, decide what the extracurricular activity merits, if anything.

If the league decides to retroactively assess a flagrant-1, Green would miss Game 5 in Oakland, California, on Monday night since it would be his fourth flagrant point of the playoffs. If the league were to find something worthy of a flagrant-2 sanction, Green would be suspended for both Game 5 and Game 6.

“I don’t know what should happen,” James said. “It’s not my call.”

Asked later if he expected anything significant would happen, James simply said, “No.”

The Warriors lead the series 3-1, and Golden State has now won 88 games this season, factoring in the regular season and the playoffs. That’s another NBA record to add to its collection, one more than the Chicago Bulls totaled in their 199596 season.

It’s unclear if the Warriors have even noticed. The next win is the only one that really matters to them.

“It’s going to be our biggest game of the year, obviously,” two-time reigning MVP Stephen Curry said of Monday. “We always talk about just because we’re going home doesn’t mean you can relax or take things for granted. You work all regular season to have home-court advantage, and this is a great opportunity for us, and we need to play with a sense of urgency and a sense of aggression.”

In other words, exactly as they did in Game 4.