Draymond Green comes out in Nikola Jokic's defense amid harsh criticism: "The stat-padding narrative is lazy"

Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors continues to stick up for most NBA players. Given that he knows what these guys do on a day-to-day basis, he can speak about these players nearly more than anyone else.

ESPN's "First Take" took a wild turn the past few days when discussing the NBA's reigning two-time MVP. While some of the talk was unnecessary, including Kendrick Perkins bringing up racism, he also made a comment about Nikola Jokic padding his stats. Bringing up all of this extra stuff when discussing the MVP makes MVP talks tough to have.

Draymond Green realizes that and said:

"I thought it was very interesting. I thought it was very interesting because of a few reasons. Number 1, it was over the MVP debate, which I think is a very interesting debate, which I also think no one has solidified yet. I think Joker is right there in the running. I think Giannis (Antetokounmpo) is right there in the running. I think Joel (Embiid) is right there in the running.

"The whole stat padding thing, accusations that Joker has been facing, I think is ridiculous. I think, if you were going to make those about Joker, you had to make those about Russ (Westbrook) when Russ was having a triple-double, triple-double, after triple-double.

"And quite frankly, even if you were going to make those about Russ, quite frankly don't care bcause do you know how good you have to be to stat pad and get a triple-double?"

"The stat-padding narrative is lazy."

Draymond Green doesn't believe the narrative that Nikola Jokic is stat padding. Jokic is an incredible talent and gets triple-doubles because of how well he gets his teammates involved.

It's interesting to hear a player like Draymond Green talk about this stuff. He's played with Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson, meaning he knows more about elite basketball players than 99% of players in the league.