In the night on Friday the first new edition of the Western Conference Finals between the Rockets and the Golden State Warriors will take place in Houston. The two heavyweights both have to struggle with problems, especially with the Warriors after the dispute between Draymond Green and Kevin Durant the house blessing is crooked.
The game can be seen live on DAZN from 2 am on Friday night.
It was then probably too harmonious in the Bay Area. Stephen Curry was busy shooting through the season, Klay Thompson forgot with his triple record that he hadn’t had a good time and Kevin Durant talked less, played more – and that damn well.
At least until the Clippers game. Curry was missing and the champion had his hands full with the uncomfortable clippers. Nevertheless, despite being 14 points behind in the fourth quarter, the Dubs fought their way into extra time and even had the chance to win before that. It was exactly this action that caused the (played?) harmony in Oakland to falter again.
Instead of serving the waiting Durant, Draymond Green dribbled and the clock ran down. Not without good reason the two-time final MVP complained about this action, after all he was the best shooter on the field next to Klay. But what probably broke the camel’s back was Durant’s gesture with his ‘Me First’ attitude.
Green is said not to have liked this at all, the word ‘bitch’ is said to have been used several times, and the Forward Durant probably accused him of wanting to attract all the attention with his upcoming Free Agency. In this situation, all the frustration that had accumulated over weeks at Green over KD seems to have come to light.
In 2016 Green even took on the playoffs with coach Steve Kerr, in KD’s first season with Golden State Green complained about Durants Iso-Plays in Memphis. David West indicated after the 2018 finals that there had been some problems within the team.
It’s not unusual at all. Compared to the ShaKobe Lakers, the Dubs are mostly choirboys, apart from Green, who is still the soul, the driving force of the team. In the Bay Area you are well aware of your sometimes difficult personality and the past has shown that he is absolutely worth the occasional trouble.
“Draymond can be very dominant and the boys know it. He has a big part in our success and therefore he will continue to enforce his style. I can’t even imagine how he could somehow change and play differently,” Kerr recently explained, underlining once again the importance of the defensive anchor.
GM Bob Myers, too, did not want to make the argument unnecessarily loud and preferred to look ahead instead. But can the two squabblers forget? Green can still recite by heart the 34 names that were called before him in the 2011 draft. On the other hand, Durant seems to have been reacting very irritably to criticism for some years now, see various media scolds (“Blog Boys”) or his escapades with Burner accounts on Twitter.
However, it was also Green who recruited Durant the most when he was a 2016 Free Agent. Both are actually good friends. I wonder if this relationship has suffered any damage. Time will tell, but already last year the Dubs often seemed bored and only got together in the postseason, even if the situation is a bit different now.
Durant, of course, bears a certain guilt, leaving his future completely open, unlike in previous years. Gone are the confessions about how great it is to play in the Bay Area, so the Free Agency KDs floats like a sword of Damocles over the entire organization, which should be optimistic about the future, as they move to a brand new area in San Francisco next year.
The fact that the Warriors Green punished the incident with a suspension that costs the former Defensive Player of the Year a full 120,000 dollars could also be seen as a sign of “good will” towards KD. According to Marcus Thompson (The Athletic), the punished player was quite surprised by the suspension.
The situation is unique in the history of the league anyway. The Warriors are in the middle of a dynasty, perhaps the best team in history. No top player has ever voluntarily pitched his tent elsewhere in such a situation. Durant could become the first, some points at the moment at least to it.
Page 1: Is the dynasty of the Golden State Warriors crumbling?
Page 2: The problems of Houston Rockets