Boston Celtics fans at TD Garden clearly enjoyed heckling Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green during Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night.
But did the crowd get a little too caught up in the moment?
C’s fans, who showered Green with boos throughout the contest, at one point shouted, “(Expletive) you, Draymond,” which didn’t sit well with the Warriors, or Celtics legend Cedric Maxwell.
“That crowd was absolutely bonkers,” Maxwell said Thursday on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s “Toucher and Rich.” “Now, I’ll say this, and I’m trying to be fair on both sides, but I did not like what they were chanting about Draymond. I really did not. And the reason I say that — ‘F you, Draymond’ — is, to me, I think our fans are more classy than that. And also, the other thing is there were a lot of kids in that building. I think that’s the last thing you want to stand beside your 5-year-old son saying, ‘What letter are we using here right now to go along with Draymond’s name?’ “
Maxwell’s complaint is kind of funny, seeing as he played during the late 1970s and 1980s, when toughness more or less was a necessity across the NBA. He also has exchanged verbal jabs with Green in recent days, so one would assume he’s in full support of Celtics fans giving the Warriors agitator an earful.
But Maxwell believes fans at TD Garden crossed the line Wednesday night with their NSFW chant, a message that only grew louder as Green fouled out in the fourth quarter of Boston’s 116-100 win. And he’d therefore prefer the crowd come up with something a little more clever moving forward.
“I love the swearing, but in the right terms with the right people,” Maxwell said. “You bring it into a building like that, and our fans are classy fans, they’ve done all these creative things and they’ve said things about Kyrie (Irving) — like, ‘Where is Kyrie?’ I love that kind of stuff. But chanting that ‘F’ word, to me, doesn’t hold a place for a classy crowd. Also for a building that has a bunch of kids. And yeah, have they heard that word before? Yeah, but I’m not trying to really just repeat it in a building like that with 20,000 people chanting. It did echo, and it did affect Draymond.”
The Celtics and Warriors return to the TD Garden hardwood Friday night for Game 4, with tipoff scheduled for 9 p.m. ET. Boston leads the best-of-seven series 2-1.
