The Warriors expressed frustration with how the officials on Tuesday night handled the altercation between Klay Thompson, Jaden McDaniels, Rudy Gobert and Draymond Green 103 seconds into the game.
The scuffle began when Thompson and McDaniels got tangled up, and it appeared both players escalated the situation by trying to throw each other to the ground. Gobert got involved, and Green came from out of the play to put Gobert in a choke hold.
Green got assessed a Flagrant 2 foul, which carries an automatic ejection. Thompson and McDaniels earned ejections, and Gobert didn’t get penalized.
“There’s no way Klay Thompson should’ve been thrown out of the game,” Warriors head coach Stever Kerr said postgame. “He’s running up the floor and the guy grabs his jersey, and he’s pulling on him, so Klay pulls back. No way Klay should’ve been ejected. That was ridiculous.”
In the official pool report, the officials deemed Gobert a “peacemaker” for trying to separate Thompson and McDaniels. The Warriors didn’t see it that way.
“If you watch the replay, Rudy had his hands on Klay’s neck,” Kerr added. “That’s why Draymond went after Rudy. I saw one replay right after it happened. Guys on the back of the bench were telling us that Rudy had Klay, and that’s why Draymond went at Rudy. That’s all I know.”
“I don’t think Klay should’ve gotten ejected,” center Kevon Looney said postgame. “Somebody tried to, you know, attack him. And I was surprised Gobert walked away with nothing after he grabbed Klay first. Draymond was trying to protect a teammate. So it was a little bit of a shock. It is what it is.”
Gobert, in his postgame interview, called Green’s choke “clown behavior” and theorized that the power forward wanted to get ejected because he doesn’t like to play without Stephen Curry, who missed the game due to a minor knee injury.
McDaniels shared his side of the story, saying Thompson grabbed him first — “for my collar” — so he tried to defend himself and get him off of him.
Looney said he doesn’t consider the Warriors and Timberwolves to have bad blood between them, but the past two matchups — Tuesday and Sunday — have been particularly intense. Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards has said publicly that he wants to beat the Warriors because of Green’s trash talk, and Green has voiced some displeasure over Gobert in the past, refusing a comparison between him and the French center before the 2022 All-Star game.
“You keep mentioning me in the same sentence with him. We’re not alike,” Green said then. “We ain’t nothing alike.”
The Warriors and Timberwolves’ next matchup is in March, but they could meet again before that in the In-Season Tournament.