Draymond Green and Kevin Durant sat down in a 22-minute chat to discuss their careers, their time as teammates, and more. The Golden State Warriors big man and the Brooklyn Nets superstar left it all out in a revealing interview.
One of the biggest questions of this chat involved their infamous on-court argument in a game against the Los Angeles Clippers in 2018. Around the 8.35 minute, Green asks Durant the big question, inquiring how much their heated exchange led his teammate to leave the Warriors a couple of months later.
Draymond: “How much did our argument against the Clippers drive you to leave the Warriors?”
KD: “It wasn’t the argument, it was the way everybody acted like it didn’t happen. Steve Kerr acted like it didn’t happen. Bob Myers tried to discipline you and think that that would put the mask over everything. I really felt like that was such a big situation for us as a group. The first time we went through something like that. We had to get that shit all out. I remember watching ‘The Last Dance,” and when Scottie didn’t go into the game, the whole team in the locker room said, ‘Scottie that was f****d up that you did that.’ We needed that. We just needed to throw all of that shit out on the table and say, ‘Yo, Dray, K, that was f****d up that we even had to go through that. Let’s just wipe our hands of that and go finish the task.’ I don’t think we did that. We tried to dance around it. I just didn’t like how all of that, just the vibe between all of that, it just made shit weird to me. And I’d rather us, be who we say we are. Family first. Communication is key. Like we didn’t show that. And that’s what rubbed me the wrong way more than anything.”
After that moment, KD’s relationship with the Warriors wasn’t the same. He would leave the team in 2019 and sign with the Brooklyn Nets. The 2x NBA champion lived three intense years in the Bay. Unfortunately, things didn’t end well for him.
Now Durant is trying to build something with Kyrie Irving and James Harden in Brooklyn. On the other hand, the Dubs are trying to return to the top of the league next season. Klay Thompson is back, and they have a talented group that can make good things happen in the upcoming 2021/22 season.