Draymond Never Asked Durant If He Wouldn't Have Joined Warriors, We 'Beat the S--t Out of Everybody'

The Golden State Warriors losing the 2016 NBA Finals is a sliding doors moment because they responded by signing Kevin Durant that offseason. For Draymond Green, however, there isn't that much to reconsider.

"It's a great hypothetical," Green told The Athletic's Nick Friedell regarding whether Durant still would've joined a Warriors squad that won 73 games and captured a title. "Who knows? Maybe. But what's for certain is we continued to beat the s--t outta everybody."

The four-time All-Star added he has never sought an answer directly from the source.

"Nope," he said. "Because it's irrelevant. We continued to beat the s--t out of everybody with Kev, so nope."

Coach Steve Kerr was willing to entertain the exercise a little more and believes closing out the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016 might've effectively cost Golden State the chance to land KD.

"My guess is that he wouldn't have come," he said, per Friedell. "But you'd have to ask him, who knows? All these hypotheticals, you can play this game for every team, every championship team, every team that loses in the finals. There's all these what-ifs. And what-ifs dot the history of sports. If you're involved with it you really don't spend a lot of time trying to answer what-if, you just acknowledge the what-if and you move forward."

Durant already received a ton of pushback and mockery for what people viewed as piggybacking on what the Warriors had already built.

Throwing away a 3-1 series lead against Cleveland at least lent some credence to the idea that Golden State wasn't as invincible as its 2015 title and 73-9 record had led fans to believe. A player of Durant's caliber was both a luxury and a necessity to lift the team over the top again.

If Golden State is a two-time reigning champion on top of setting a single-season wins record, KD might've looked at the situation a little differently. He could've concluded he'd get little to no credit for winning his first championship, thus removing a lot of the satisfaction when it finally happened.

Given the multitude of factors at play, the 2016 Finals are arguably the NBA's biggest hinge point since The Decision in 2010.

The Cavs' comeback is when the legacy conversations for LeBron James intensified. Maybe he could actually challenge Michael Jordan for the honor of the greatest ever.

What happens for LeBron and the Cavaliers if they lose two straight Finals to the Warriors?

Then there's Durant's free agency and the domino effect that caused. Would he have stayed with the Oklahoma City Thunder or join another contender? Imagine him going up directly against LeBron in the East as a member of the Boston Celtics.

Alas, we'll never have the answers to those questions.

To Green's point, what we do know is that the Warriors with Durant were basically untouchable for a two-year period.