Green learned from Game 5 suspension: 'I will always control my emotions now'

As he digests the most crushing loss of his career, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green can't help but think back to Game 5 of the NBA Finals - a game he watched from neighboring Oakland A's stadium while serving a league-issued suspension - and wonder what might've been.

Green's fate for that game was sealed when a retaliatory swing of his forearm to LeBron James' groin area late in Game 4 was retroactively ruled a flagrant-1, pushing his playoff flagrant-point total past the NBA's suspension threshold.

So instead of helping the Warriors clinch their second straight title, he watched James and the Cleveland Cavaliers extend the series. He did his damnedest to render that fact moot in Games 6 and 7, but was ultimately powerless to stop the runaway train of historic momentum Cleveland got rolling in Game 5. Green, whose emotional intensity was both a blessing and a curse this postseason, is trying to use the experience to better himself, as both a player and a person.

"I learned a lot about myself as a man," Green said in the last entry in his Finals diary for The Undefeated. "I got to control my emotions. I will always control my emotions now. There is a silver lining in between everything. I'm not a guy that takes moral victories, but I did learn from that. I learned that I can't put myself in harm’s way and that’s in anything. That's in basketball. That's in life. You can't put yourself in that position.

"I think it will make me a much better player. I will have the same fire. I had my fire tonight, but it was controlled. It will make it a lot better."

Green was the best Warriors player on the floor by a mile in Game 7.

He finished with 32 points, while shooting 11-of-15 from the field and 6-of-8 from 3-point range. Adding 15 rebounds, nine assists, and two steals in a performance that would've gone down as an all-timer if Golden State had won (and probably still should anyway).

And yet, Green's legacy in the series may end up being tied more closely to the game he missed than the one in which he nearly willed his team to a title.

"Everything happens for a reason," he said. "I'm not sure what that reason is right now. I know that I've learned from (the suspension). I know it will make me better down the line. But there is still more to it. It will eventually come to me, but I don't have the answer right now. But the one thing I do know is I've learned from it. And if you can learn from something in life, it can go a long way."