“Intervention.” Coming to Theaters Near You
We and a few Happy Hour regulars engineered a Hollywood ending to the Draymond Green suspension drama. You’re gonna love it!
Noun: group·think ˈgrüp-ˌthiŋk
a pattern of thought characterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics
Who knew “group think” was such a bad thing?
Our intention at the outset of this Wrap was to brag, gloat, boast, crow and bluster about how a small cast of our favorite happy hour regulars came together last night - yes, alcohol was involved - to write a perfectly sellable Hollywood movie script based on the current Draymond Green suspension.
Internet research into the idea of “group think” fucked up this approach. We thought everyone might agree that multiple collaborators can contribute to a sum greater than the sum of its parts. Apparently, modern business thinkers are down, not up on “group think.” They suggest it ruins business decisions, stifles creativity and removes accountability.
We beg to differ. Read on to see what group think produced for us - and for all of you - last night at the bar. Then, you be the judge! Here’s what happened, how it happened, and what we produced.
Revisiting why the NBA’s best defensive player ain’t playin no mo
You may recall from the end of our last Wrap, the Potpourri Wrap, we spoke of Golden State Warriors Forward Draymond Green’s indefinite suspension for bitch-slapping Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkić in the face a few days ago.
The suspension was not only for the unprovoked bitch slap of an NBA professional player. The league is miffed with Green’s multi-year history of unsportsmanlike conduct. His conduct is not only unbecoming an NBA professional, it’s really unbecoming of a decent human being.
This year alone Draymond has three flagrant technical fouls, all followed by game ejections and now two with suspensions. The suspension before the current one lasted five games.
Now let’s do some math together here people. An NBA player foregoes all pay for games suspended. And with his annual contract at $25 million a season, CBS News estimates his first five-game suspension forced him to forfeit $769,704, and the current one will cost him roughly $150,000 per game if it is less than 20 games, going up to about $200,000 per game after that.
Let’s say Draymond somehow manages to be allowed to play after just 20 games. That brings his lost pay to $2.23 million!
It’s one thing to lose control of yourself every now and again - to be a hot head and a fierce competitor who loses your temper. It’s another thing to be so at the effect of your emotions that you are unable to modify your behavior even when it means coughing up 2.23 mil, and possibly more.
To view the most recent incident for which Green was indefinitely suspended, click here.
It’s not just the other team in danger around this guy!
Last year you might recall Green sucker punched a player on his very own team! In a pique of anger over some disagreement about his teammate’s play, Green smacked Jordon Poole right smack in the middle of a televised game. The lingering bad chemistry of that exchange is largely thought to underlie the Warrior’s trading Poole for esteemed veteran Chris Paul just prior to the 2023 draft. This surprised Dub fans, who thought Poole Steph Curry’s heir apparent. Paul, like Curry is winding down his career, not up!
Over the past several years, Green has collected a slew of technicals and ejections, not to mention ejections and technicals. Heck, were you to stream all of Green’s flagrant fouls together, one after the other, we suspect you’d become pretty dangerous in your own right just from the exposure to so much hostility and violence.
Leading us and many to think of Green as Golden State’s version of the Chicago Bulls’ fierce bully player, Dennis Rodman. Rodman, who helped make all those Michael Jordan championship teams pretty special, made his brand of defense all about intimidation. With Rodman and Green both, when they were in the game, their teams tended to win. When they weren’t, their teams tended to lose.
Under this latest suspension, Green will be required to meet unspecified league and team conditions before he’s allowed to return. The public is not yet privy to these unspecified terms and conditions, but it has been reported that Green will undergo some form of “anger management therapy” as a condition for coming back.
Now how many of you really believe therapy is going to cure what keeps this meanspirited animal cagey, fierce and ready to fly off the handle at even the tiniest provocation?
Everyone in unison now!
“Not me!”
A movie waiting to be made!
Enter an alcohol-influenced idea of pure genius! We admit to being the primary instigator, but we did manage to solicit considerable help and engagement from all the regulars around us.
Here is us, talking loud enough to be heard by all at the bar:
“How great would it be to see a Hollywood movie where someone just like Draymond Green were forced to undergo anger management with a licensed therapist, who is barely equipped to handle the challenge?”
“Sure” offered Chuck, to my immediate right. He was quick to add on.
“Naturally, he’d return to lead his team to the championship, proving he actually can play great defense without being such a complete horse’s ass.”
We were delighted, and the lubricated gears of our brain began to go in motion as we started to imagine scene after scene in our mind’s eye.
“Ok guys,” we said. “Help me sell this to Hollywood and the public at large. It all starts with casting, scripting and marketing.”
We quickly agreed budget was no object. Given that, who should we cast as our therapist?
“Ok,” we said. “She needs to be attractive and someone everyone knows. She will draw people in just with her name. What’s her face who played the FBI agent while posing as a candidate for Miss America? You know, she also takes on that high school aged black kid and helps him become an NFL star? You know that movie, what’s that movie?”
That was us talking and we admit it: We were two beers and tequila shot into this project. Pictures were shaping up in our brain fine, but words and memories were failing to keep up.
“Miss Congeniality and the Blind Side”
That was Rabib, a house guest to the left of us.
“Sandra Bullock.”
That was from a guy one stool over from Rabib whom we had never met before. Clearly he was ready to work with us. But here the bigger point: Sandra Bullock, yes! Smart enough to play the role, pretty enough to make us watch.
Now at this point in our movie’s development, I felt the need to remind everyone in our slowly swelling group at the bar of some helpful guidance to keep our collaborators in line; there were now several others standing right behind us, drinks in hand, hoping to contribute.
“Remember, now, we can’t actually make this movie about Draymond. He’d sue our asses. But whomever we pick to play Draymond will need to be ‘suggestive’ of Draymond. Tall, athletic, iconic. Doesn’t matter if he’s cast as a basketball player. Just someone generic enough to make people think of Draymond, or any other abusive, aggressive, overly violent athlete in any other sport.
It was Chuck, we think, who blurted out the following perfect suggestion. (It was getting harder by now in the fog of beer and tequila to remember who suggested what.)
“Will Smith!”
“Yes, yes,” almost everyone screamed in unison! “Here, here!” There was applause and murmurs of appreciation flying every which way. People not at the bar were looking at us, wondering what in the world was going on.
You will recall, of course, that Will Smith is tall, black, athletic, handsome and the same dude who bitch slapped Chris Rock at the Grammys! How perfect. Brilliant in fact!
Do you see what we mean? This “group think” stuff can actually work! How many of you wouldn’t pay to watch this tale taking shape under our watch at DeVino’s Bar and Grill, or at least present to witness it’s spirited development?
Wait! The script keeps getting better
So we have our cast. But a Hollywood movie cannot get sold or bought without something extra from the story it’s based on. Here’s more spice our now slurring bar mates managed to help us add to it.
Sandra Bullock in our now entirely fictional account of the Draymond Green story is not just any therapist but a failed therapist. Her prior clients have either committed suicide or failed to achieve any resemblance of recovery, which seriously weighs on her sense of self worth, her commitment to her career, and to the audience’s sense of just how competent this therapist is going to be with a Draymond-like character.
Meanwhile, the Golden State Warriors, (sorry, we mean whatever fictional team we make up in the script ) is weary of Draymond’s $25 million a year contract (sorry, we mean Will Smith’s character’s contract). Hence the team is quite eager to find a therapist whose intervention will either result in his suicide or at least a failure of the patient to recover. They could not be less interested in the athlete’s healing and toxic return to the team.
Enter Sandra Bullock, who agrees to try just one more therapeutic intervention before taking down her shingle on her San Francisco office door.
Did we say San Francisco? Sure. We can go that far at least in reminding our audience who we are really portraying here.
A happy ending imagined!
Well, yes, one of those happy endings. But implied at the end, not shown. At some point in the group think negotiations, someone said the word “porn” as a joke. Everyone laughed but we quickly stopped that talk.
“No. We’re going to keep this clean! We want kids to see this! Families. Disney is going to want this. Warner Brothers. MGM. They will all be throwing money at us left and right for rights to this one.”
Ya. That was us again under delusions of grandeur.
Now, to prove we have at least some idea of what works in Hollywood and what sells at the box office, we proposed our tale should end in typical Hollywood fashion. Despite her poor track record of therapeutic interventions, which the sports team is counting on, Sandra Bullock somehow connects profoundly with our elite professional athlete!
She stumbles on some secret recipe that convinces Draymond (sorry, we mean Will Smith’s character) that his anger triggers have nothing to do with the victims of his on-court outbursts, but stem instead from some childhood trauma he will recall in therapy. Something like his dad bursting out in anger, slapping his son in anger, and telling him he made some unpardonable error while playing ball for school’s 4th grade team.
Thanks to this revelation and subsquent release of pent up anger and shame, our Draymond character makes peace with his estranged dad, forgives him, and manages to get back to his team. Once back on the court, he is a new man! He leads his team to the playoffs and eventually the championship.
Naturally, there will be a scene in the championship game toward the movie’s end, where an opposing player, eager to see Dray, un, we mean Will Smith ejected, will taunt and bully and scream in Will Smith’s face daring him to strike.
The refs whistle to stop the argument from escalating. Will Smith walks over to the opposing player, looking murderous. It’s a tense moment and the audience has no idea what Draymond/Will is going to do!
“Dude! I love you man. I love everyone”
Dray/Will is crying. He opens his arms and hugs the player warmly as if he were his best friend in all the world.
Naturally, Dray/Will and Sandra Bullock fall deeply in love because their connection is so profound. And that happy ending we are craving? Well the audience get’s it when they see their transformed hero hugging that other player, and his team proclaimed champions.
Dray/Will and Sandra meanwhile will get their happy ending off camera, sometime after the movie’s credits roll up with these words:
“Screenplay by The rapt Wrap editorial team, with special help from DeVino Bar and Grill’s regulars.
Now is that a happy ending, or not?
Whatever your answer, that’s your Wrap.
That's a blockbuster, all the way!