The NBA’s most genuine fight of the season didn’t just produce punches, ejections, and suspensions, it produced a meme, too. And once the clip started circulating, it was only a matter of time before Draymond Green weighed in.
The incident happened late in the third quarter of Phoenix’s 123–114 win over New Orleans on Dec. 27, when Jose Alvarado and Mark Williams got tangled after a screen, jawed, shoved, and then escalated into a brief exchange of punches. Both players were ejected on the spot, and the league later handed down suspensions: two games for Alvarado, one for Williams.
But the moment that truly took off online wasn’t just Alvarado landing the cleanest shot, it was Jordan Poole’s face in the background, caught on camera at the exact instant things turned from “scrum” to “this is a fight.”
Enter Draymond.
On The Draymond Green Show, Green called out Poole for how he reacted, clowning the look on his face and the general “standing there” energy as the scuffle unfolded. In one widely shared segment, Green framed it through the lens of teammate responsibility:
“I ain’t saying you gotta go over there and fight, but you at least gotta go stand up…”
Draymond Green calls out Jordan Poole for his reaction during Mark Williams’ fight with Jose Alvarado 😅
(🎥 @DraymondShow / h/t @BrickCenter_ )
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) January 6, 2026
That’s classic Draymond, because the subtext is always louder than the words. Green isn’t just commenting on a funny freeze-frame, he’s making a point about how NBA players are judged in moments like this. Not necessarily by whether they throw punches, but by whether they show presence when things get chaotic, whether they move toward the fire or away from it, whether they look like a teammate or a bystander.
And Poole, fairly or not, became the bystander-in-chief for one viral clip.
The irony is obvious enough to not even need spelling out: in a league that still hasn’t stopped referencing the Green–Poole relationship every time their names cross, seeing Draymond critique Poole’s body language during a fight was always going to land like gasoline on a spark. The internet didn’t treat it like analysis, it treated it like a sequel.
What’s real is the chain reaction: a rare, real on-court fight; a perfectly timed reaction shot; and then one of the NBA’s most polarizing voices turning it into a lesson on “how you’re supposed to look” when your teammate is in it. In 2026 NBA culture, that’s a full news cycle, and Draymond knows exactly how to drive it.
