In the latest episode of Kevin Durant’s podcast The ETCs, Draymond Green and his former teammate cleared the air about their infamous on court confrontation, and the rumor that two weeks before Durant announced he was signing with the Golden State Warriors, the two spoke with one another while a tearful Green was still in the Oracle Arena parking lot following Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals.
On that heated exchange, which unfolded during a 2018 game against the Los Angeles Clippers, Green described nearly verbatim what was said between the two. After Durant scolded Green for not passing him the ball, Green said “Hey, motherf*cker I do this too! I was going to give your ass the ball if you weren’t bitching! I do this too!”
That’s when DeMarcus Cousins pulled Green away, and told him to “shut the f*ck up.”
“No, that’s bullshit,” Green responded. “Nobody says shit to K. All he had to do was f*cking run, and I would have pitched him the f*cking ball back.” Durant basically corroborated Green’s account of the incident, proving that despite their pasts, the two players are still on good terms.
As for that parking lot rumor, Durant said the two simply exchanged texts about what had just occurred in the 2016 Finals—which the Warriors lost to LeBron’s Cavaliers but he never considered it to be a sense of urgency on Draymond’s end about getting him to sign with the Warriors in the offseason. Green added, “Y’all added a theatrical sense to make this shit a movie. You gotta make shit for TV, you gotta add on a little, so people just start pouring on. I wasn’t about to come out and fight it.”
As the story goes, shortly after the Cleveland Cavaliers came back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Warriors and capture their first title in franchise history, Green reportedly called Warriors general manager Bob Myers from the parking lot, urging him to sign Durant before calling KD himself.
Green’s comment about adding a “theatrical sense” is in regards to the narrative that he called Durant with tears in his eyes, but it’s unclear where that part of the story came from. Draymond previously acknowledged in a 2016 interview with DraftKings that he spoke with KD before the legal tampering date of July 1, but he dismissed them as being nothing more than conversations between friends. However, once that day arrived, Green said he kept in constant contact, admittedly sending “too many text messages” to Durant.
The GDOAT and the MSOAT
In that same interview, Green revealed that he wasn’t actively trying to recruit Durant. “Me and KD weren’t really talking during the playoffs,” he said. “During the playoffs, it’s a little different. More is at stake. So we weren’t talking much, and that’s normal.”
Later, Green gave his opinion on the league’s crop of youing players, and he was about as candid as you’d expect.
“They soft as hell. I’ve found myself trying to talk shit to some of these young dudes that won’t talk,” he said. “And they’re like trying to be a friend. That’s what these young dudes do nowadays. I don’t understand it.”
Listen to the entire episode here.
