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Warriors' Draymond Green Says 'The S--t' with Kevin Durant Won't Tear Them Apart
March 20, 2019
Someday, the Golden State Warriors' championship dynasty will end for reasons to be determined.
However, the mid-November 2018 argument between Warriors forward Draymond Green and teammate Kevin Durant will not be a cause.
Green, who was suspended one game for that confrontation, made it clear to Sam Amick of The Athletic that the moment will not "tear [the Warriors] apart":
"Like I said in the beginning of the season, when the s--t happened with me and Kevin, everybody hopes that something like that would tear us apart. But the fact of the matter is it's not. And until somebody can come and beat us, it don't matter. If I was on the other team, I'd hope some s--t like that would tear us apart too."
Green echoed similar sentiments in the days following the argument, per Connor Letourneau of the San Francisco Chronicle:
"What you must know is that nobody in this organization, from a player—not myself, not Kevin, not anybody else—is going to beat us. If you're one of those 29 other teams, you've got to beat us. We're not going to beat us. We're going to do what we do.
"This only makes Kevin, myself and the rest of my teammates stronger; that's what it's going to do. You think you saw something before, good luck with us now. We're not going to crumble off of an argument. We're going to move forward. That's all I've got to say."
Ultimately, that moment seems like water under the bridge, as the season wasn't even a month old yet. Now the playoffs are four weeks away with the Warriors leading the Western Conference at 48-22, albeit just a half-game ahead of the Denver Nuggets.
Still, Green is right. A four-month-old argument isn't going to turn a dynasty into ruins, though this team will stop winning championships at some point.
Amick examined the possibilities of why the Warriors may fall short, including fatigue, the continued process of how to best fit Cousins in the lineups and rotations, and the upcoming free agency of Durant and Klay Thompson.
The former two could be a problem this year, with the latter reason potentially being an issue in 2020.
As for this moment, however, the Warriors have been given a 57 percent chance to win the NBA Finals, per FiveThirtyEight, or 14 percent better than the rest of the field. They'll sit on the throne until someone knocks them off.