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With live sporting events still on hiatus, the sports loving nation gathered around their TVs last Sunday like old times to watch ESPN’s much anticipated “The Last Dance” docuseries, that includes never before seen footage from the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls championship season.
The parallels to the 2018-19 Warriors are already there to see, especially with Ethan Strauss’s new book, “The Victory Machine,” detailing the “last dance” nature of Kevin Durant’s final season in the Bay, and how the superstar’s attitude contributed to difficulties.
Draymond Green, who’s argument with Durant in November of that season hovered over the team for the remainder of the season, touched on those difficulties on Uninterrupted’s “WRTS: After Party” show with Paul Rivera and Maverick Carter.
Put simply, Green says Durant’s choice not to address his impending free agency was an “elephant in the room” all season. Green believes Durant’s decision to not talk about it was a mistake.
“So, for instance, Kevin took the one-year deal on his own,” Green began. “So that was kind of the elephant in the room,” Green said. “And although Steve’s approach was like, ‘Hey, guys, let’s approach this year because we don’t know what next year brings,’ you’ve got Kevin’s contract, you’ve got [Klay Thompson]’s contract, and I kind of got thrown in that contract thing, although I had another year after that year, which was this year. And so that was kind of the elephant in the room, and although Steve would kind of hit on it, [saying], ‘Let’s just enjoy this year for what it is because we don’t know what next year holds,’ it didn’t necessarily carry the same weight because what should have happened was Kevin come out and say, ‘Hey, man, this is it, so let’s do this,’ or, ‘This isn’t it.’
“But you can’t just leave the elephant in the room, because what happened was the question came to us every day, like every time we spoke to the media, Klay and myself was asked about our contract,” Green said. “It was strictly due to Kevin, because while that was going on, Klay was saying, ‘I want to be a Warrior forever. I want to be here. We started this thing. This is where I want to be.’ I’m saying, ‘Yo, I want to be here for my career. We started this, we built this, I want to finish my career here with the guys I started it with.’ And then you kind of had Kevin, [saying] like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do next year, and it don’t matter’; but it does matter, because you’re not the only person that has to answer that question.
“To be quite frank with you, you’re honestly the last person that has to answer the question because you don’t really say s—. Like, you don’t say much to the media. If anything, you tell them to shut the f— up. Well, I don’t tell them to shut the f— up. I kind of have a conversation, and so I’m stuck answering that question all the time. And due to that, there was always an elephant in the room amongst us, as opposed to with [the Bulls], they didn’t have that elephant. [General manager Jerry Krause] had said it was Phil’s last year. Phil had told them this was the last dance. Mike already said, ‘Well, if Phil ain’t coming back next year, I’m not either.’ So everybody knew it was Mike’s last year. They didn’t have that elephant. Whereas I think we had a huge elephant sitting in the room, and Steve was trying to address it as best as he could, but it was kind of out of his hands.”
