Draymond Green sings LeBron James’ praises nowadays, but that wasn’t always the case. Green’s opinion about James has actually changed quite a lot over time, as he often took shots at him back in the day. Some of his old tweets from 2010 and 2011 recently resurfaced on social media and the contrast from then to now is shocking. In one of those posts, Green went as far as to call James a loser.
It seems unthinkable now that Green would say something of that sort about James. He was very much part of Team Kobe Bryant at the time and that was far from the only post where he compared the two stars.
Green called Bryant the best player in the world in 2010 and took a shot at LeBron by claiming he wouldn’t even try to take a charge for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Kobe would go on to win his fifth title in 2010, and that led to even more shots being fired at LeBron for not winning even one ring.
A fan had joked about Bryant being just one ring away from equalling Michael Jordan and LeBron being two rings away from tying Sasha Vujacic, and Green found that to be quite funny. While those first two tweets can still be found on his account, Draymond has deleted this one about the rings, which I find quite interesting.
Not long after the 2009-10 season ended, rumors started swirling around that LeBron might be teaming up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the Heat. When NFL star LaMarr Woodley stated that the trio could win 75 games in a season, Green disagreed.
Only a LeBron hater would think that the Heat would win 40 games in a season if he teamed up with Wade and Bosh. James made it official days later that he was indeed heading to Miami with “The Decision” and Green was not a fan of the move.
Unsurprisingly, this post has been deleted for obvious reasons and so are the others you’d see below. Green also claimed that LeBron knew he couldn’t lead a team to a title and later predicted that the Heat wouldn’t win it all. Then during preseason ahead of the 2010-11 campaign, Green appeared to accuse LeBron of faking an injury as well, because Wade was out.
LeBron wouldn’t miss much time, though, and was back on the court before the start of the season. There were some ups and downs during that first season with the Heat, with the low point during the regular season being a 30-point blowout loss to the Spurs on Mar. 4, 2011. Unsurprisingly, Green took a shot at James when that happened too.
Green certainly didn’t think LeBron had ice in his veins back then. While that loss to the Spurs was the low point of the regular season, the low point of the campaign as a whole was that disastrous loss in the NBA Finals to the Dallas Mavericks. James struggled in that series and when a fan claimed afterward that he would give Jordan problems with his size, Green dismissed that notion.
To be fair, LeBron wasn’t giving anyone problems in that series against the Mavericks. It was the low-point of his career and fortunately, things got a whole lot better after that.
James won back-to-back championships with the Heat in 2012 and 2013 and then famously beat Green and the 73-9 Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals after returning to the Cavaliers. Draymond infamously hit him in the groin area and called him a “b****” in that series, but their relationship would improve in the years that followed.
In 2019, Green signed with Klutch Sports, which also represents James. Then by 2022, Draymond had changed his tune completely about LeBron. He called him the greatest ever and added that he had been the best player in the NBA since his third season, which completely went against some of those old tweets.
“My top five is LJ No. 1, MJ No. 2, Kob No. 3, Steph (Curry) No. 4, and Shaq (Shaquille O’Neal) No. 5,” Green said on Throwing Bones. “… Bron started in ’03, by 2005, Bron was the best player in the NBA.”
(starts at 35:33 mark):
That’s quite the switch-up considering how dismissive Green was when it came to LeBron at one point. I get that opinions can change over time but you don’t see this drastic of a change all that often. With how close these two are now, I think it’s safe to say we won’t be seeing another switch-up from Green in the future.
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