The Warriors had no incentive to keep Draymond Green in line. Now they have no choice.

After more than a decade of playing with fire, the Warriors are finally getting burned. Now what choice do they have but to smother the flames?

• Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green has been suspended indefinitely by the NBA.
• The power forward has a history of wayward conduct over his 12 seasons in the league.
• The Warriors could have prevented this escalation, but they had no incentive to act — until now.

For as long as the Golden State Warriors have relied on Draymond Green's defensive brilliance to power their decade-long dynasty, the franchise has seemingly taken a hands-off approach to managing its firebrand.

Team leadership surely knew that, by fanning the flames of the power forward's fire, they could eventually wind up with an inferno on their hands. But with four NBA title runs fueled, at least in part, by that flare, they've had no incentive to contain the blaze.

Until now.

The NBA suspended Green — who has been named to eight NBA All-Defensive Teams — indefinitely after he struck Suns center Jusuf Nurkic in the face during Tuesday night's matchup in Phoenix. According to the league's release, the strict punishment "takes into account Green's repeated history of unsportsmanlike acts" that have resulted in three ejections and a five-game suspension this season alone.

It's not as if the NBA stood idly by for Green's past outbursts; he's picked up six suspensions — including one that contributed to Golden State's historic collapse during the 2016 NBA Finals — and 19 ejections over the course of his career. Only Rasheed Wallace of the notorious "Bad Boy Pistons" has been ousted from more games in the history of the league.

But Green doesn't seem to care much about discipline from the NBA. After his penultimate incident — exactly one month before hitting Nurkic, the 33-year-old earned a suspension for holding longtime rival Rudy Gobert in a headlock as a scuffle broke out between their two teams — Green expressed frustration with the league subjecting him to double jeopardy each time he crosses the line.

"To continue saying, 'Oh, what he did in the past,' I paid for those," Green told The Mercury News. "I got suspended for Game 5 of the Finals. So you can't keep suspending me for those actions."

"They've made it clear that they are going to hold everything against me that I've done before," he added. "That's OK."

But grievances from inside Golden State's facilities could very well prompt change from the wayward star. He implied as much in the same interview:

"I need to adjust where I see fit, where my teammates see fit, where my coaches see fit, where our front office sees fit," Green said. "The people I care about, I trust, when I hear them say something, it means something to me."

At long last, leaders inside the franchise are speaking up. Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said he hopes the suspension will offer Green "the opportunity to make a change that will not only help him, help our team, but help him for the rest of his life," per CBS Sports.

Two-time NBA MVP Steph Curry — the de facto leader within Golden State's locker room — said the team is committed to "holding Draymond accountable to what's been going on and what needs to change."

The fact that they've chosen to speak now, while the Warriors are in the midst of one of their most disappointing seasons in years, is hardly surprising. Nor does it come as a shock that Golden State has characterized Green's persistent on-court transgressions as a mental health concern instead of a years-long competitive strategy that has finally ceased to work in the team's favor.

After more than a decade of playing with fire, the Warriors are finally getting burned. Now what choice do they have but to smother the flames?