Kevin Durant pulled a shocker in the summer of 2019. He used the free agency to end his three-season stay with the Golden State Warriors and signed up with the Brooklyn Nets. There are rumors that suggest KD's departure from the Bay Area was partly caused by his very public confrontation with Draymond Green, which the superstar rejected.
Recall that in November 2018, the Dubs suffered an overtime loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. It was a game that KD thought the Warriors could have won had Green pushed a little harder, and he made sure that his former teammate got to know his feelings.
What sparked the argument between the two was the lost chance by the Warriors to win the game at the end of the regulation. The score was tied and Green was able to haul down the loose ball. According to Clutch Points, Durant was getting his teammate's attention for the ball but the time ran out.
When the players returned to the bench, an argument between the two players erupted but it was a good thing that cooler heads intervened. Per the same report, the word-war only stopped when DeMarcus Cousins made the decision to bodily remove Green away from KD.
However, bad words have been thrown around and speculations were rife it was an episode that convinced Durant his time with the Warriors was done. It didn't help that the two-time Finals MVP suffered an injury, forcing him to watch on the sidelines as the Toronto Raptors took away the crown from his team.
Nearly two years after the incident, KD maintained that his spat with Green was exaggerated in the reports. Appearing on a podcast by Pelicans guard J.J. Redick, Durant said what happened after can be best described as "drama."
"Me and Draymond, we got better after that actually ... I felt like I was more locked into the team after that. I felt like he understood me more because we sat down and talked about that whole situation," NBC Sports reported the Brooklyn star as saying.
Durant revealed that he had a serious talk with Green after the on-court fight and the mess was fixed. No further negatives followed and had his injury was not too serious, it would have been business as usual for the two players.
Usual business, of course, is playing their hearts out during that fateful season and perhaps winning his third NBA title in the same number of consecutive attempts.
NBC said it's hard to deny that KD's claim makes sense. He was doing great before the clash with Green and playing at superstar status, which continued until the Warriors reached the Finals again. The ending though was not as envisioned by Durant and his teammates but his numbers that season backed his insistence that he was a better man in the aftermath of the incident.
