Green on spat with Durant: ‘I was wrong’
On the eve of the Warriors’ season opener at Chase Center against the Clippers, the team’s major drama of a year ago received a dose of closure.
Warriors forward Draymond Green accepted blame for November’s oncourt blowup with Kevin Durant and said the ensuing onegame suspension made him briefly question his relationship with general manager Bob Myers, during Wednesday’s episode of the Woj Pod.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski held a joint interview with Green and Myers, and the player spoke of his respect for the GM’s truthful approach — “Bob doesn’t know how to lie” — which Green said is rare in the NBA. He said it’s one reason they have become close.
But that didn’t soften the blow when the team suspended him after the argument that started during a Nov. 12 game against the Clippers in Los Angeles and extended into the postgame locker room.
“That was the hardest thing for me, because a lot of people don’t understand me. Bob does. I started to tell myself and my mind, ‘Wow, he’s flipping on me. Nah, that’s my guy, I’m super tight with Bob,’ ” Green said. “... Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, my god, the Warriors sided with Kevin Durant,’ and I was like, ‘Whoa.’ ”
Wojnarowski followed with a question about whether Myers anticipated that narrative, but Myers instead responded by asking Green: “Where are you now with that? I don’t even know.”
“I just had to accept the fact that I was wrong, and once I was able to get over my stubbornness and accept the fact I was wrong, I was able to move on,” Green said. “… What they did was actually the right thing. Do I think it could have been handled better? I think there were other ways to handle it, but nonetheless, something had to happen.”
In the fourth quarter of that overtime loss to the Clippers, Green dribbled upcourt and, instead of finding Durant for a possible gamewinner, he lost control of the ball. Green and Durant yelled at each other during the ensuing team huddle, with Green challenging Durant about his status as a free agent and repeatedly calling him a “bitch.”
The Warriors suspended Green without pay for the next game against Atlanta for “conduct detrimental to the team.”
Myers said he knew something was eating at Green after the suspension. For one thing, they weren’t talking — which is rare for them.
“I could see his wheels turning, like, ‘Oh, you’re done with me, too, and this is where you are?’ ” Myers said. “The only way I could go to bed after that decision, I thought what we did was right. … And look, maybe I was wrong, I don’t know.”
Rather than change how he handled the aftermath, Myers said he should have addressed the issue before it reached its boiling point. Green said the team’s communication “lacked when we needed it most.”
“It took a huge hit on what we built here. And we all got through it and worked through it and almost won a championship, but we also all went through some unnecessary things that if our communication was as stellar as it has always been, we wouldn't have gone through,” Green said. “And who knows what that changes?”
The Warriors traded Durant to the Brooklyn Nets in July, and he’s almost certain to miss the season while recovering from a torn Achilles tendon.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Magazine this summer, Durant called the incident a “BS argument that meant nothing” and insisted he and Green were “great” both before and after it.
Green said he initially resisted when head coach Steve Kerr and Myers asked him to apologize to Durant.
“I never apologized to him until I came to grips myself with, ‘You were wrong, and how do you fix it?’ ” Green said. “Not because of some games, or the team ain’t flowing right, but I can kind of see a look in my brother’s face that I have not seen. He’s hurt. How do I fix that, and that was what bothered me more than anything.”