Draymond Green and Kevin Durant haven’t always had the steadiest relationship, but Green says comments by Durant following Green’s latest suspension indirectly led to a big breakthrough for the Golden State Warriors star.
On December 12, Green was suspended indefinitely by the NBA for hitting Jusuf Nurkic in the face trying to draw a foul on the Suns big man. That was Green’s second altercation and suspension of the season—he received a five-game ban in November when he put Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert in a headlock.
On the first episode of his podcast—The Draymond Green Show—in the last six months, Green described how he isolated himself from the world following the incident, and how conversations with head coach Steve Kerr and NBA commissioner Adam Silver helped convince him not to leave basketball entirely. But those conversations might have been more difficult if Durant, who now plays for the Phoenix Suns, hadn’t dropped a quote in the aftermath that left Green “really pissed.”
After Green’s suspension, Durant was one of a number of players who expressed a desire that Green “gets the help he needs. […]I know Draymond, and he hasn’t been that way when I was around him and coming into the league.”
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Green said he questioned who Durant was to be saying Green needed “help.”
“I started going into this deep dive,” Green said. “But then it’s like ‘Wait a minute. What do you want the world to know about you?’ So I sat with myself and thought about that, and I’m like, ‘Interestingly enough, the world still thinks I’m the same Draymond as I was in 2017.’ And the reality is I’m not. I’m not even close to the same Draymond that I was in 2017. But I quite frankly have not allowed anyone in the world to see that growth, to see that change.”
Green added that he has had his “reasons” for not allowing the world to see his growth, citing his public life.
“Sometimes you just want to cut that off,” Green said. “And what I realized in that moment is me cutting that off, I have not allowed myself to be vulnerable when it’s OK to be vulnerable. I have not allowed myself to grow in certain areas that quite frankly, I need to grow. And even if I have grown in those areas, I definitely haven’t shown it.”
Green described the process of reframing how he thought about Durant’s statement.
“If I can look at Kevin’s statement the right way, through the right mindset, the right lens, he’s acknowledging essentially what I want the world to know about me,” Green said. “And then he spoke about help, and I’m like, ‘How he going to say I need help?’ When I went back through with another lens, I was like, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t hear help so negatively. […] Maybe you shouldn’t hear that so negatively, and maybe he’s not saying that as negatively as you’re taking it. And even if he was, I made a decision in that moment that I wasn’t going to take it that way.”
Green called that moment a breakthrough, since it showed he was ready for growth.
“That’s a step in the right direction, and I am one who celebrates small wins,” Green said. “I used to take wins for granted. I celebrate small wins. […] I feel like that’s a breakthrough for me. Let me build on it.”
Green was reinstated by the NBA on Saturday, and he began working out with the Warriors again on Sunday.
The Warriors are in 11th place at 17-19 and 5-5 in their last 10 games. They are 8 1/2 games out of first place in the Western Conference.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.