Green stands by his comments
Does Draymond Green regret anything he said surrounding Game 4 of the NBA Finals, the Golden State Warriors’ first postseason loss?
“Absolutely not, because everything I say I know what I’m saying,” Green said Sunday at practice. “When I say something, I’ve thought about what I’m going to say before I say it. So, no, I never look at something and say, ‘ Man, I shouldn’t have said that.’ Because I’m a lot smarter than people think. When I say something, I’ve already thought I was going to say it, so absolutely not.”
With a chance to close out the Finals before Friday night’s 137116 Cleveland Cavaliers win, Green was asked how satisfying it would be to win the championship in Cleveland like the Warriors did in 2015. He recalled celebrating on “their floor” and added that, “As an athlete, one of the best feelings is going into an opponent’s and enemy territory and just silencing their crowd.” It was nothing particularly inflammatory but used as a motivational tool by the Cavs nonetheless.
The Warriors are still in excellent position to win their second title in three years, though they no longer have a chance at a perfect postseason. From Green’s perspective, the Warriors did what they needed to do in Cleveland.
“They’re saying that (there is adversity and) we’ve lost one game. And we split on the road. I think that’s the goal,” Green said. “Take care of home court. We did that, and then you go steal one on the road. I think we did that. I don’t know where all this added pressure and this, that and the other is coming from.”
From the outside looking in, it’s the same 3-1 lead the Warriors blew in last year’s Finals.
“We won three games in a row in the Finals,” Green said. “Fifteen in a row overall in the playoffs. You just think it’s going to happen. Then all of a sudden you get smacked in the face, and it’s like, ‘Whoa.’ You remember what can be, what can happen.”
Green also added context to his postgame comments about Cleveland fans after his Game 4 technical foul fiasco: “I didn’t bash them. I just gave them my thoughts.”
Green said Cleveland fans weren’t the “sharpest people around” after they cheered his second technical foul that was later deemed his first.
“Well they booed me and they thought I had a tech I didn’t have, so that wasn’t sharp,” he said. “I knew I didn’t, so maybe I’m just a little sharper than others then, huh? I don’t know. But they played Hit the Road Jack (in the arena), and I didn’t have to hit the road. I didn’t think that was that sharp.”