Draymond Green doesn’t like it when opposing players over-act to draw foul calls. But regular theatrical acting is clearly OK with him, as the Golden State Warriors forward will be on the season premiere
of NBC’s “St. Denis Medical” on Monday.
The second-year NBC sitcom set in an underfunded hospital somewhere in Oregon will welcome Green to the cast for Season 2, Episode 1, playing a patient who gets struck by lightning.
An athletic basketball player who gets struck by lightning sounds like the origin story for the Warriors’ old mascot, Thunder, who was discontinued either because the relocated Seattle SuperSonics took that name when the moved to Oklahoma City or because owner Chris Cohen was too cheap to pay Thunder’s salary. We don’t think “St. Denis Medical” will have Green doing trampoline dunks — just sarcastic asides to the camera. Which is actually a lot like podcasting!
Green has managed to stay out of the actual hospital for the most part since a serious injury in the 2021-22 season kept him out for two months. He’s never been struck by lightning, but he was on the court when Klay Thompson scored 37 points in a single quarter, a feat that’s actually less likely. People get struck by lightning every year, after all.
It appears that Green will spend most of his time on the sitcom in a hospital bed, the acting equivalent of load management. The only less taxing cinematic device is to have an actor stand rooted in place for almost all of their scenes, which you can see with Anthony Hopkins’ performance in the “Thor” films and Cher’s work in both “Burlesque” and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” an impressive stationary performance for two films that are ostensibly musicals.
Don’t worry if Green is such a good actor that he gets an Emmy nomination. Those awards happen in September, so Green wouldn’t even have to miss training camp to pick up his Best Guest Actor statuette. Let’s just hope that when they end up in the same category, he and Jon Bernthal don’t get into a brawl.
