Draymond Green has never been interested in letting a critique hang in the air untreated, especially when it’s framed as something deeper than basketball. And after Kendrick Perkins questioned Green’s focus following a rough night, the Warriors forward answered the way he usually does: loud, personal, and with the kind of sarcasm that lets you know he’s been waiting for his turn to talk.
Perkins’ comments came on “The Road Trippin’ Show,” where he suggested Golden State should shut Stephen Curry down for the rest of the season and took a direct shot at Green’s mindset after the Warriors’ loss to the Boston Celtics on Feb. 19.
“Draymond Green, I don’t know where his mind is at, but it’s definitely not on the game of basketball,” Perkins said, pointing to Green’s performance in that game.
Green responded on “The Draymond Green Show,” first pushing back on the idea that a single bad night should be treated like a character report. He argued that the modern media machine has to fill space every day, and that one off game can quickly be turned into a bigger narrative. From there, Green’s rebuttal shifted from the abstract to the specific, and from the specific to the surgical.
“Needless to say, yeah, Perk, you never had bad games,” Green said, before leaning into a pointed reminder of Perkins’ own playing career. “Perk, we’ve seen you play, big fella… We got the clips… We got clips of your screen-setting… We got clips of your jump shots… We got clips of your jump hooks… Careful, man. We can start pulling clips now, big Perk.”
Draymond Green responding to Kendrick Perkins comments about him saying Draymond is not focused on basketball
“Yeah, Perk, you never had bad games. Perk, we seen you play big fella. We saw you, big dog. Like, you played. You know what I’m saying? Like to go in on one bad night… pic.twitter.com/GX8P90aC8y
— NBA Courtside (@NBA__Courtside) February 23, 2026
The jab worked because it was classic Draymond: the kind of response that’s half defense mechanism, half entertainment product. He wasn’t just disputing Perkins’ take, he was challenging the credibility of the messenger, framing it as hypocritical for a former player to act like bad games are some unforgivable sin.
Underneath the punchlines, though, is a familiar tension that keeps resurfacing around Green: how quickly the conversation about him can jump from performance to intent. The Celtics game Perkins referenced was undeniably a rough one for Green, and the clip ecosystem around Draymond has always been louder than the box score. That’s part of what makes him valuable to the Warriors and exhausting to their opponents: he’s always in the middle of the night, whether the story is about defense, emotion, or controversy.
This time, the argument wasn’t about whether Green played well. It was about whether a bad game meant he wasn’t locked in. Perkins tried to connect those dots. Green refused the premise, then tried to flip the spotlight back on Perkins with the oldest comeback in sports: don’t talk like you’ve never been there.
