Draymond Green taking some time off from Warriors after apologizing for scuffle with Poole / News - Basketnews.com

Draymond Green is going to take some time off from the Warriors' pre-season after his scuffle with Jordan Poole came to light through a video that leaked on the internet. The veteran forward publicly apologized for his actions.

Credit: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images/AFP Credit Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images/AFP

Draymond Green has announced his decision to walk away from the Golden State Warriors for the next few days, in a press conference in which he apologized for hitting teammateJordan Poolein a practice session.

Jordan Poole

Position:SGAge:23Height:196 cmWeight:88 kgBirth place:Milwaukee, United States of AmericaProfileNewsStatistics

The video leaked on Friday, with reports stating that the Warriors are pursuing all legal courses of action to find out how the shocking video came to light.

The clip shows Draymond Green exchanging words with Jordan Poole along the baseline, before bumping chests with the guard, who tries to push the veteran forward out of the way. He then retaliates with a vicious punch to knock his teammate down.

In the wake of the clip going public, Green decided to speak to the media, calling the leak 'bulls--', while also apologizing to his teammate once again. Green said he would speak about incident to reporters instead of podcasting, so he could take questions.

"Number one, I was wrong for my actions that took place on Wednesday, and for that I apologized to my team, I apologized to Jordan. I don't hide from anything. I own my mistakes," he said.

"I wanted to take that one step further with yesterday's video leak event. There’s a great shame that comes from that, not only from me as the one who committed the action, but from the shame that Jordan has to deal with, that the team has to deal with, but Jordan’s family has to deal with.

His mother and father saw that video. Frankly, I know if my mom had seen that video, what her reaction would be, what her next step would be. So I apologize to his mother and father."

Green said fight with Jordan Poole had "absolutely nothing to do" with contract extensions: "I can assure you I don't count other people's pockets. That's nothing I would ever stop doing."

The Warriors' forward pointed out that he has been dealing with undisclosed things in his personal life, and that's one of the reasonshe's going to take some time off.

"I will continue to stay away. I've been away. I will continue to do work on myself. And continue to give guys space," he explained.

Draymond Green called himself "a very flawed individual", but it's not clear if he plans to take any anger management classes and/or seek therapy.

Asked whether he expects to play in the Warriors' season opener, his answer was affirmative. "I expect to play," he replied. "But will I play? That is a completely different story and something we will figure out."

From now on, Green thinks the task at hand is "to rebuild trust in our locker room and pull everything back together in order to repeat and defend a championship. Although that is the least of my worries right now, that has to stay at the forefront."

"When you are doing something when you step on the court, that doesn't go away. As a leader of this team, I need to have a better feel for myself," he further acknowledged.

The 4-time NBA champion addressed the issue of the videobecoming public:

"I thought it was bullsh-- that it leaked. No other videos leak from practice. When we're working on our sets, they don't leak," he said.

The 32-year-old forward stressed he watched the video "15 times, maybe more" and conceded "it looks awful, it looks even worse than I thought it was. It's pathetic."

"Then, I had to take a step back to it and realize that video was actually released to look that way. I don't know who released it, but I'm very thankful to the Warriors organization for taking it as serious as they have and for launching the investigation.

They're not obligated to launch an investigation for something I did wrong. The video serves the purpose it was supposed to serve. I was like, 'Oh, this is terrible, this is awful!' It is terrible and awful. What I did was wrong.

Regardless of how the video was leaked with audio or without audio, I was wrong. I accept that and will move forward with that," Green concluded.

Video of the incident:

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