Team will bolster security after tweet
After a New Orleans-area comedian tweeted Sunday about someone possibly shooting Draymond Green, the Warriors are allocating extra security to protect Green.
“Our security people will be on it,” Golden State head coach Steve Kerr said after the team’s optional workout Monday. “I mean, we all know the guy came out and said, ‘I was just kidding.’ But our security people are all over everything that happens like this. There are plenty of things that happen like this that nobody ever finds out about.”
After the Warriors’ Game 4 rout of the Pelicans on Sunday, Andrew Polk — a standup comedian from Ruston, La. — tweeted that he hopes Green “gets shot in the face as soon as he leaves the arena.” The immediate backlash to the tweet was so strong that Polk briefly deactivated his Twitter account.
Asked after the game about the tweet, Green voiced pity for Polk, saying: “If he feels the need to do something like that about basketball, then I feel bad for him. It’s kind of sad that someone would take this that serious when you’re talking, at the end of the day, (about) what’s a game. Making death threats, talking about life. I just pray that he gets the help that he needs.”
Polk reactivated his account and apologized for his tweet. However, Green wasn’t satisfied. He tweeted that he hoped Twitter bans Polk from the social-media platform, and “you could’ve saved your wasted time on that apology.”
The national attention Polk’s tweet received was somewhat
rare, but threats are hardly uncommon. Members of the Warriors receive death threats each season that aren’t reported in the media.
Last May, Golden State center Zaza Pachulia received death threats after he was involved in the play that resulted in San Antonio forward Kawhi Leonard sustaining a seasonending sprained left ankle in the Western Conference finals. It was enough for security guards to be deployed to the entrance of the school of Pachulia’s kids.
Kerr also knows what it is like to receive a death threat. In February 2008, after Kerr — then the Suns’ general manager — traded Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks to the Heat for Shaquille O’Neal, Kerr got a call from the FBI notifying him of a call made to Phoenix’s offices threatening to shoot Kerr.
“Deep down, you know it’s a hoax, but there’s also a part of you that’s like, ‘Hey, we’re talking about a game,’ ” Kerr said. “It’s very disconcerting. It’s unfortunate. I guess it’s inevitable in the age that we live in. A lot of people now are able to tell jokes that we only think about in our head.
“We all think stupid thoughts, but the way we live now, we immediately express those thoughts and put them out into the world for everybody to see. It’s created a very strange world for all of us to see.”