Draymond Green sounds off on Kevin Durant’s final Warriors season
Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green did not hold back about discussing Kevin Durant’s final season while discussing ESPN’s The Last Dance documentary with UNINTERRUPTED.
The documentary examines Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997-1998. Before the season, Jackson titled the season “The Last Dance” because ownership had already informed him that it would be his final year with the team. Green was asked about how Durant handled his looming free agency. Durant won two NBA championships but had yet to sign a contract extension.
“I think Phil did what was great, which is acknowledge the elephant in the room,” Green said to hosts Maverick Carter and Paul Rivera. “Because all year, if Phil doesn’t do that, all year everyone else is dealing with that somewhere. And whether it’s coming in questions, so now once you get these questions from the media, we’ve already addressed that as a team. We really don’t need to talk about that. And our season was a little different from the standpoint of it was contracts, but it was on players. It wasn’t necessarily the organization.”
“Kevin took the one-year deal on his own. So that was kind of the elephant in the room,” he added. “And although Steve’s approach was like, ‘Hey, guys, let’s approach this year because we don’t know what next year brings,’ you’ve got Kevin’s contract, you’ve got [Klay Thompson]’s contract, and I kind of got thrown in that contract thing, although I had another year after that year, which was this year. And so that was kind of the elephant in the room, and although Steve would kind of hit on it, [saying] ‘Let’s just enjoy this year for what it is because we don’t know what next year holds,’ it didn’t necessarily carry the same weight because what should have happened was Kevin come out and say, ‘Hey, man, this is it, so let’s do this,’ or, ‘This isn’t it.'”
Green and Durant got into public verbal disagreements on the court. He declined his $31.5 million player option last June and hit unrestricted free agency. He was eligible to re-sign with the Warriors on a five-year contract worth $221 million but opted to sign a four-year deal worth $164 million to team up with Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan on the Brooklyn Nets.