Draymond Green, like a lot of us, has plenty of time right now. But this week, following the premiere of “The Last Dance,” and Green being a part of the last great dynasty that the league has seen with the Golden State Warriors, he has spent the past week shining more light on the dynasty that dominated the league for the past five years.
Green already went on record this week saying that older players romanticizing the rivalries of the old days more myth than truth and then later in the week, he criticized his former teammate Kevin Durant. Durant’s role and eventual departure in the Warriors dynasty is the main story in Ethan Strauss’s new book “The Victory Machine,” which illustrates the forces that brought together and eventually broke up the dynasty.
One of those, according to Strauss, was that after Durant and the Warriors beat LeBron James and the Cavs in the 2017 NBA Finals, neither in the court of public opinion nor at Nike where both are signature athletes, was Durant considered to be above LeBron. And in an appearance on Showtime’s All The Smoke podcast with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Green confirmed that the lack of a change in opinions about his status in the pecking order changed Durant the next season.
Draymond says he feels KD changed when LeBron was still being considered the best player in the NBA after the 2017 Finals. pic.twitter.com/dJd3yRP492
— Chris Montano (@gswchris) April 23, 2020
According to Green, after that Finals, Durant would take more issue with the style of play of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, even though the Splash Brothers weren’t doing anything different. Green also criticized Durant for never addressing the elephant in the room with the Warriors, that 2018-19 was going to be his final season with Golden State.
Now, Durant is on the Nets with Kyrie Irving, the same teammate with whom LeBron won his crown jewel title. If Ty Lue ends up joining the Nets as a coach, we will have some idea of what it would be like to see Durant in LeBron’s place.
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