One of the only on-court incidents during the Warriors dynasty was an argument between Draymond Green and Kevin Durant in November 2018.
Tied at 106 against the Los Angeles Clippers with less than five seconds to go, Green grabbed a rebound in front of Durant and raced down court instead of giving Durant the ball. Green turned the ball over and the game went into overtime.
Durant reacted with frustration and Green began to yell at him on the bench. Teammates including Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala tried to intervene.
Durant, now with the Brooklyn Nets, addressed the incident on “All The Smoke,” a show led by Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
“It really came out of nowhere. The play happened, I was going to grab the rebound, he came and grabbed it, I’m thinking he gonna just toss it to me and we gonna run up court and I’m gonna shoot the shot … We all figured that that would happen and then when it didn’t, I was kind of shocked. I was like ‘Oh, Dray, let me see that … what you doing’ … I’m just so confused at that point because he never ever did nothing like that before.”
Durant got to the bench before Green, who sat two seats down and started yelling toward him.
“He usually screaming when he come back to the bench, but what is he saying? Then he started going off,” Durant said.
Thompson moved to the seat between them. Iguodala, and later other players, came over as well.
“Draymond is actually my friend, somebody I could call when I’m going through anything,” Durant said. “For him to say that type of [expletive] to me, it just threw me for a loop and I just started isolating myself after that because I didn’t feel like…”
Durant paused to collect his thoughts, then he continued:
They suspended Draymond, but it was just like, they had to so it won’t look bad to everybody else. And then nobody talked to me about it … It happened in front of the whole team and nobody really talked about it. It was just swept under the rug. And to me, it was just like, we’re a family. Even if he said that, we could move past it. Let’s all talk about. Let’s just say how we all felt about that moment cause that’s a huge moment in this whole dynasty. Don’t just sweep it under the rug cause we want to win. That’s the reason why we’re not going to win. I was like, let’s just all talk about this, it’s not that big of a deal. Just put out it out on the table, we can move past it. And when that didn’t happen, I was just like, ‘F*** it. Let me just hoop and worry about myself.’”
Durant didn’t like the way the team never really came together to address the incident after it happened. He and Green sat down and discussed it, but “It happened in front of the whole team. Everybody got to talk about this.” They didn’t.
Despite that, Durant insisted he never felt separated from the team and that he was always one of the Warriors. He said media members were creating a storyline that didn’t exist out of his relationship with teammates.
Watch the full episode here. This part begins around the 21:00 mark.