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OAKLAND — I was going to write a big ol’ story about how the Warriors — despite having a roster full of big names, big games, and even bigger personalities — have managed to keep the waters around the team generally calm.
I was trying to get to the bottom of how the passive aggressiveness and pettiness that has seemingly dominated this era of the NBA — the kind of nonsense that has hit the Rockets, Timberwolves, Wizards, and Lakers this season — has seemingly missed the Warriors, despite a ripe cast and plenty of opportunity for squabbles and disagreements.
Then Monday happened. The fallout followed on Tuesday.
So much for that story — disorder has reached the Warriors’ house.
Make no mistake, Draymond Green and Kevin Durant’s pre-overtime scuffle in Los Angeles was not just a heat-of-the-moment tiff or business as usual. You don’t lose a paycheck — as Green did Tuesday after the Warriors suspended him for a game against the Atlanta Hawks — over a run-of-the-mill, end-of-game disagreement.
General manager Bob Myers and head coach Steve Kerr — two of the most open people in their respective roles in basketball — aren’t as guarded as they were in press conferences before Tuesday’s game over a regular dust-up, either. (Myers wouldn’t even hold a press conference if this was a normal situation.)
And a regular disagreement with some charged words doesn’t leave the Warriors’ GM and coach looking as emotionally drained as they seemed to be Tuesday.
No, this is something bigger. This is real-deal drama — the kind the NBA is chock full of these days; the kind the Warriors have expertly navigated around for the last few seasons.
So is the end of the dynasty nigh?
If Durant does leave in free agency next summer — title or no title in tow — there’s no doubt that the incident at Staples Center will be viewed as a turning point.
Ultimately, only time will tell how this all goes down.
But right now, things do not look good and it’s hard to see them turning around anytime soon.
It can be said without impediment that Green crossed a line Monday. The spat, which carried over from the bench to the locker room after the game, was apparently pretty rough. Things-that-cannot-be-unsaid rough.
The suspended Green was not at Oracle Arena before the Warriors’ game against the Hawks. Durant — who was still peeved about the situation — said after the game that he and Green had not spoken since it all went down.
No matter how bad the rift between the two is, to jump to the conclusion — as many have — that Green and Durant have irreconcilable differences is probably too aggressive.
But just “probably”.
Green and Durant are good friends who have certainly gone at it too many times over their three seasons together to count. Their relationship wasn’t fractured after any of those incidents.
That’s why some Warriors say (and actually believe) that things will eventually be just fine between the two.
This is how they operate: Green is fiery and demands the best from everyone — but especially Durant — and sometimes the supremely talented Durant comes back at him.
But this is different. This is next-level.
After Monday night’s dust-up, I thought back to Green’s famous 4 a.m. text message to Durant during the Warriors’ playoff series with the Pelicans — another time Green and Durant weren’t seeing eye-to-eye. (I was told then that the famed text wasn’t as benevolent as some have made it out to be.)
Absent from both that incident and Monday’s? Stephen Curry.
And that made me think back to something Kerr told me last week, as we talked about the Warriors’ steady, no-drama culture. (What a novel concept…)
When Kerr took the Warriors head coaching job five years ago, he wanted to establish a culture of joy and competitiveness. A tough line to walk, no doubt, but it’s one that he believed best reflected his personality.
“I just gotta be myself. We play basketball for a living. How lucky are we?” Kerr said. “But also, I want to win so bad.”
“How do we capture all of that? Competition, joy, being wise out on the floor, being mindful of your teammates — those things were all important to me. And when I got here, almost in the first couple of weeks, I realized ‘my god, I’ve just described Stephen Curry’ — a way better version of myself; way more fun, way more talented, way more creative.”
And this Durant-Green situation is obviously anything but fun and joyful. You didn’t need to watch and listen to Kerr on Tuesday to pick up on that, but it certainly hammered home the point. He was not himself.
“I think Steph’s approach sets a tone, and as a result of that tone, we get the best out of everybody,” Kerr told me last week. “Steph brings a sort of child-like zeal to the gym every day. He loves life, he loves life so much, and what it does to our vibe in here is incredible. I think that sort of joy that Steph brings — we try to draw that stuff out of guys as a staff — sets the tone for that atmosphere.”
“I think he deserves a lot of credit for the even-keeled way we go about our business.”
And the two players Kerr singled out, unprompted, who benefit the most from that ‘joy’ Curry brings were Durant and Green.
“I think Kevin is fitting in so perfectly here. Kevin is an unbelievably hard worker — if anything we have to help him just enjoy it, enjoy the process. The vibe in here, it helps Kevin, it helps Draymond,” Kerr said. “Draymond loves having fun — he also snaps every once in a while. He and I have occasionally gotten into it over the years, but we always sort of return to our norm, our base, which is that joyful, fun, man-are-we-lucky-to-be-here atmosphere that yes, we [coaches] try to project, but to me, it starts with Steph.”
The Warriors’ on-court identity starts with Curry too, and his absence in that realm seemed to have played a role in Monday’s tiff, too.
The Warriors were lacking that Curry joy on the court well before the end-of-regulation dust-up, and the contrasting styles of Green (who is a bishop in the church of pace-and-space) and Durant (whose game could translate to any era) came into sharp focus on the final play.
When Green rebounded the ball, he wanted to push the pace — he wanted to adhere to the Warriors’ ideology of thriving amid chaos. It’s something that works significantly better when Curry is playing, but it’s the Warriors’ identity, established over the last five years.
Meanwhile, Durant wanted the ball with what one can only presume was the intent of hitting a Game 3-style shot right in the Clippers’ face.
Neither option is bad — though Kerr, by not calling the Warriors final timeout, passively sided with Green. Nevertheless, the issues that came from the play stemmed from the result.
Green, of course, lost the ball as Durant asked for it through a series of claps, and the Warriors and Clippers went to overtime.
Green is usually the one who calls out teammates, but, like so many of us, he does a poor job of not projecting his insecurities when challenged. This is not a new development.
Monday’s poor end-of-game execution no doubt brought up memories of his failure at the end of Game 5 of last year’s Western Conference Finals — a play that almost ended the Warriors dynasty itself. A play that Green is still trying to get over.
He was primed to clap back.
But the fact that it was Durant — a player Green has needed to tell to be more aggressive on more that one occasion – getting in his face after the play (fairly, but still), makes it easy to see how the situation blew up.
Joy was nowhere to be found. Calmer heads did not prevail. Things spiraled. The closest the Warriors have come to a moment like that was when Kerr and Green went at it in the visitors’ locker room in Oklahoma City in 2016, when Green challenged his coach to fight him (along with other, unprintable, things).
It all led to Tuesday’s suspension. It put this team — one of the greatest of all time — at a crossroads.
There have been multiple reports that Green took issue with Durant’s pending free agency in the spat — either in the huddle or in the locker room after the game. There’s every reason to believe that’s the case, and I have to say: I’m not surprised. Green is a world-class trash talker — an expert in finding weak points (I’ve experienced this first-hand) — and Durant’s pending free agency has hung over the player and this team like a cloud.
It’s both Durant and this team’s weak point right now.
And for Durant to lord over this team — because, hey, he might just leave — has to feel a bit personal for Green, who was the Warriors’ lead recruiter of the All-Star forward. Green knew that the Warriors needed KD after their loss to the Cavs in the 2016 NBA Finals. Green is all about titles — his personal legacy and the Warriors’ legacy are tied together — and signing Durant would ensure that the Warriors would be the title favorites for years to come.
At the same time, Durant, by signing with the Warriors, admitted that he needed to learn to play at a higher level, and a big part of that — at least with the Warriors — is being willing to accept Green’s fiery personality.
Perhaps Green knows Durant is done — much like LeBron’s four years in Miami, the all-time great has learned all he can from this experience and is ready to move on, effectively ending the Warriors’ dynasty in the process.
Perhaps this whole arrangement had run its course before Monday.
Maybe that’s the reason why Green was suspended — management was siding with the free-agent-to-be in an effort to keep him around.
Again, my mind goes to comments Kerr made last week, under different circumstances.
And I can’t help but think that — if this no-good situation had been bubbling under the surface and exploded Monday — that he should have known better and gotten out ahead of it.
After all, Kerr was a member of the second three-peat champion Bulls team. That trifecta began with Michael Jordan punching Kerr in training camp in 1995 and ended with the team breaking up in spectacular fashion in 1998.
Kerr’s experiences with that team informed his self-fulfilling prophecy that last season was going to be grueling — a grind.
“That was different because that team — ownership and management had decided ‘this is it’. We ended up winning the whole thing, but we were running on fumes at the end,” Kerr said Here, the idea is to keep rolling — to keep doing this for years to come. And we have an incredible ownership who is going to spend whatever it takes.”
“Our players know that, so yes, we have some free agents. They’ve seen what management has done for every single guy in this room, and what they will continue to do. It’s not about management or ownership or coaches. It’s not an us vs. them thing, it’s just us.”
“Hey, let’s enjoy this. This is utopia. This is not the norm in the NBA.”
But after the rare but undeniable tumult of the last 24 hours, it must be asked: Are the Warriors destined to follow in the Bulls’ path?
Is this still utopia?
That’s for the Warriors — and specifically Green and Durant — to decide over the next few weeks.
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