Draymond Green Laughs at Magic Johnson Saying Lakers Would Have Swept Warriors

Draymond Green dismissed Magic Johnson's claim the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers would have swept the Golden State Warriors before Tuesday's practice session. 

“Nowadays if you can’t shoot a three, you’re a liability on the floor,” Green said, per Al Iannazzone of Newsday. “That wasn’t the case back then.

“I never understand when people try to compare eras and say, ‘This team could have beat that team’ or ‘They couldn’t have beat that team,’ or ‘This player is better than that player.’ It doesn’t make sense to me because you’re kind of talking two different games. I never really understand that or get off into it. They were great in their time. We’re great in our time. Respect that.”

The Warriors, up 2-0 on the Cleveland Cavaliers heading into Game 3 of the NBA Finals, have won a postseason record 14 consecutive games. Twelve of those wins have come by double digits, including a plus-41 total margin in the two wins over Cleveland.

Johnson said Monday that the Warriors would be "too small" to contend with himself, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Showtime Lakers. Arash Markazi of ESPN provided the Hall of Famer's full comments:

Green dismissed the notion and the debate as a whole as "stupid."

"We would say, 'We would have ran them off that gym,'" Green said. "But is that true? I don't know. We'll never know. But in the same sense I don't think they were as fast as we are. I sound stupid, right? I think I sound stupid because that's how all of that be sounding to me."

While cross-generational debates will never stop, Green's point is the correct one. The game the Showtime Lakers played is vastly different than the one of today's NBA. 

The 1986-87 Lakers, who won 65 regular-season games and are arguably the best team in franchise history, made 164 three-pointers as a team. If you double their total, that's only four more than what Steph Curry made by himself during this past regular season. The teams scored a comparative number of points but did so in vastly different ways under vastly different rules.

Would Curry get as many open shots with 1980s hand-check rules in place? Probably not. Would Magic's defense become an issue running through multiple pick-and-rolls? Probably. Same probably goes for Kareem, who would have been taken out of his comfort zone stylistically now as Green would be playing the small-ball 5 in the '80s.

That's not going to stop debate, but the correct answer in nearly all of these cases is "we don't know."