The Warriors dynasty looked to be in peril following a November incident in Los Angeles this season. After Draymond Green sent a game vs. the Clippers into overtime with a late turnover, he and Kevin Durant had a verbal spat on the bench. Green apparently went too far, questioning Durant’s commitment to the team, leading to a one-game suspension. Some believed the blow-up caused a crack in the team that wouldn’t be repairable.
That all seems like ancient history now, as the Warriors are just hours away from their fifth consecutive trip to the NBA Finals. Green, who was inconsistent throughout the regular season, is playing some of the best basketball of his career with Durant out.
For the first time, Green went into detail about that November incident with KD when speaking with Rachel Nichols of ESPN.
“I think I just have looked at it from a different perspective,” Green said. “It wasn’t necessarily that him being a free agent bothered [me]. We all go through that in this profession. It was more so the fact of, ‘Are you with us or not?’ That bothered me. But what I’ll say is, after I had that moment, one thing Kevin told me is, ‘Dude, you have to block out all of that. You see me coming here and work every day. You see me give my all to this team. You see everything, every second of every day. The media is gonna say what they want, but you see everything, you know I’m here, you know I’m with you.’
“And it allowed me to focus on that. It allowed me to focus on what I see, what I can control and not what I can’t see per se and what I can’t control. And so I think that was just the point for me of where I had to look at it from a different standpoint. I had to stop listening to all the noise.”
Green is averaging 13.6 points, 9.9 rebounds and 8.2 assists per game in 16 games this postseason. Durant was averaging 34 points per game before his calf injury, and is expected to return at some point during the Finals, though he will not play in Game 1. Green acknowledged that his role changes with Durant sidelined.
“It completely changes,” Green told ESPN. “I have to be more of a scoring threat when Kevin’s not out there. I have to — I really try to push the pace more when he’s not out there. When Kevin’s out there, we all have the luxury of just saying, ‘OK, that set didn’t work, we still got this guy to just throw a ball into it and get out of the way.’ That luxury isn’t there anymore, and also I think with Kevin being out, we’re trying to make up 37 points again.”
