Draymond's not a fan of KD?
Hold the fort. Draymond Green has an issue with an NBA player? Kevin Durant's short stay in Golden State wasn't all about love, friendships and winning titles?
A story came out on Tuesday morning after Green commented on the Chicago Bulls' documentary "The Last Dance" on Uninterrupted's "WRTS: After Party" show with Paul Rivera and Maverick Carter, which was posted on Monday on YouTube. Green spoke about the comparison between the Bulls' dynasty in the 90's and Golden State's success in the late 2010's.
The Warriors were not dismantled the way the Bulls were after that 1997-98 season. Michael Jordan decided to retire (for the second time) right before the 1998-99 season during the lockout. Durant was traded to the Brooklyn Nets for D'Angelo Russell and two other players after he ruptured his Achilles' tendon in the 2019 NBA Finals.
Durant signed a one-year deal with a player option with the Warriors after two strong seasons with the team. So it should not have come as a huge surprise that he turned down a five-year, $221 million offer from the team to sign with the Nets. He felt more comfortable with that team and Kyrie Irving than he did with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, coach Steve Kerr and Green.
“It definitely hit close to home,” Green said on Uninterrupted’s “WRTS: After Party” show. “I think what Phil did was great, which is to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Because all year, if Phil doesn’t do that, all year everyone else is dealing with that somewhere….So now once you get these questions from the media, we’ve already addressed that as a team. We really don’t need to talk about that. And our season was a little different from the standpoint of it was contracts, but it was on players. It wasn’t necessarily the organization.”
Green is not afraid to voice his opinions. He characterized Durant's one-year deal and uncertainty as "kind of the elephant in the room." Maybe Green was just too naive and a lot of people were. How in the hell could Durant leave one of the best teams in the history of the game and one of that could have made history? Because KD is not your typical player and all you have to do is follow him on social media and realize he's incredibly thin-skinned for an NBA superstar.
At the beginning of the 2018-19 season, Green and Durant got into a shouting match on the bench. If Durant had reservations about leaving the Warriors, that helped make his decision easier. The media kept pressing Durant every day and he remained quiet. On the other hand, Klay Thompson was also set to be a free agent, but he claimed that he wanted to "be a Warrior forever."
I don't love the fact that Durant left Oklahoma City in the first place to join a team he couldn't beat. But in this case, he's his own man and maybe he wasn't 100% sure that he was going to leave. So whether he wanted to leave or not, why did he have to tell Green? Couldn't he read the tea leaves? Durant signed a one-year deal, which meant he already had reservations about staying with Golden State for life. What's the difference had he come out and said he was leaving or he was staying (or not sure)?
Professionals are supposed to try and win games, so sure, there were some comparisons to the "Last Dance", but it only blew up because Thompson (ACL) and Durant got hurt in the Finals and then Curry (finger) was injured early in the 2019-20 season. Durant and Green walk to the beat to their own drum and the only thing they owed was to give it their all on the court in the 2018-19 season. Had KD and Thompson remained healthy, the comparisons to that 1997-98 Bulls' team would have been even closer.