CLEVELAND -- Draymond Green was assessed with a technical foul in the first quarter of Game 4 Friday night that disappeared sometime in the third quarter.
Which is when Green was assessed with a technical that, by all appearances, was his second and thereby disqualifying foul.
That's when things turned weird.
Just when it seemed Green would be ejected, the officiating crew of Mike Callahan (lead), Marc Davis and John Goble stepped in to convey that Green's first technical -- as stated on the original game book -- actually was assessed to Warriors coach Steve Kerr.
Green and the officials may have been the only men at Quicken Loans Arena already aware of that.
"Yeah, I knew," he said after Cleveland finished off a 137-116 win to send the NBA Finals back to Oakland with the Warriors up 3-1.
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"Because after the first tech on Steve, which I didn't understand, Mike Callahan came up to John and asked him who the tech was on, and he said Kerr. So I knew I didn't have a technical foul.
"But I'm still trying to figure out why did I get the ‘second' one."
It was all very confusing in real time, and afterward no less so to perhaps everyone beyond Green and the officiating crew.
"I thought they called it on Draymond; I thought I deserved it," Kerr said of the first-quarter call.
"But I thought I heard the PA announcer say that it was on Draymond. So then I thought on the second one Draymond was going to get kicked out. But they explained that the first one was on me."
Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue also seemed mystified.
"Mike Callahan told me that the first one they called was on Steve Kerr," Lue said. "And I said, ‘Well, it's right here on the sheet that it was on Draymond, and our scorers' people said the same thing.'
"But evidently he said no, it was on Steve Kerr, the first one. So that was the explanation."
In a game in which 51 personal fouls and seven technical fouls were called, Green remained on the floor.
"He told me to keep playing," Green said of Davis. "I asked him, and he told me to keep playing . . . It's crazy to think to think he thought that was my second technical foul and I would get a technical foul for that."
To recap, Green stayed in the game and so did Kerr. The entire episode was strange. Given the way the teams performed, though, it had no influence on the outcome.
