With Kevin Durant, the Golden State Warriors were one of the best NBA teams of all time. They absolutely dominated the league for three seasons, winning two championships and making it look easy. As the recent Rockets-Durant trade has KD back in the news, it was expected that someone had to bring up Durant’s time in Golden State.
Who better to ask about Durant’s Warriors tenure than Draymond Green? Green was one of the biggest reasons Durant joined the Warriors, and maybe one of the biggest reasons he left.
Recently on “The Pivot”, Draymond addressed Durant’s time in Golden State.
“Without Kevin Durant, I don’t know if we was gonna win another championship,” said Green.
This is a hypothetical that we will never get to see.
That being said, we know two things. One, the Warriors won a championship before Durant came. And two, they won one after he left.
This is what makes Green’s comments a bit odd. Instead of giving himself, and more importantly, his teammates, credit for what they’ve done without KD, he decides to harp on whether they could have gone all the way without him.
Ironically, Draymond famously told Durant, “We don’t need you, leave,” in the middle of the 2018-19 season.
So, as always, we need to take Draymond’s comments with a grain of salt. If the Warriors never got Durant in the summer of 2016, they still were coming off the greatest regular season of all time with three Hall of Famers and a ton of cap space.
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Would they have won the next two championships? Maybe not. But would they have still been able to grab one or two more in the next few years? Probably.
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