Earlier this week, Chris Russo went viral for all the wrong reasons with his comments about Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green. While on First Take, he said Green should “shut up and play.”
“He’s so hard to root for,” Russo said. “Shut up and play. Will you please? America’s tired of Draymond Green. I deal with him constantly. Be quiet and play. We all know he has a great skillset for that team. I understand how good he is. I can’t root for him.”
JJ Redick let him hear it, but now we are hearing from the man himself.
The Warriors forward spoke on his podcast The Draymond Green Show to discuss the analyst’s comments.
“Yesterday, he [Russo] goes on TV and he says ‘America is tired of Draymond Green.’ He then proceeds to say ‘shut up and play,’” Green said. “I’m not one to really pull a race card very often because I think we all know the role that race plays in a world that we live in, but that definitely had a racist connotation.”
Green then revealed he was offered a role on First Take before signing with Turner Sports.
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“It’s time for you to go home and sit on your couch and thank the good Lord that I didn’t want his job. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Before I signed with Turner, I was actually offered a spot on First Take.”
Green went on to explain that there are analysts like Russo who didn’t play the game professionally and don’t understand the position the players are in. He added that there’s a “new media” wave of former professional athletes joining talk shows to provide firsthand insight like never before.
“Those ‘shut up and play,’ ‘shut up and dribble’ days those are long gone,” Green said. “We don’t listen to that anymore, we don’t want to hear it anymore. It has no place here, nor will it be tolerated.”
“You will no longer be allowed to sit there and say what you want, you will no longer be allowed to put out these false narratives, you will no longer be allowed to not know what you’re talking about and we’re going to listen to you,” Green continued. “Those days are long gone. You know why? Because we have guys like JJ Redick who’s done it, who speaks it, who knows how to speak on any different topic, who’s not afraid to shut an idiot up.”
Russo has yet to publicly respond to Green’s comments.
