Draymond Green on Parallels Between 2018-19 Warriors and ‘Last Dance’ Bulls
Written by SOURCE on April 21, 2020
After watching the first two episodes of the ESPN docuseries The Last Dance on Sunday, Draymond Green admits that seeing everything that transpired with the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls in their final title run together struck a chord with him, especially after what he went through last season with the Golden State Warriors.
“It definitely hit close to home,” Green said at around the 35-minute mark in the above video. “Ironically, our season was the 20-year anniversary of that season. We have a very important piece of our season, who was a piece on that season, who was Steve Kerr.”
Green appreciated how Bulls head coach Phil Jackson started the 1997-98 campaign by acknowledging the elephant in the room that this would be the last time Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman played together.
“I think Phil did what was great, which is acknowledge the elephant in the room,” he added. “If Phil doesn’t do that, all year everyone else is dealing with that somewhere. So now once you get these questions from the media, we’ve already addressed that as a team. We really don’t need to talk about that.”
Green felt like his former Warriors teammate Kevin Durant didn’t give the team that same type of courtesy when he allowed the uncertainty regarding his future with the organization to remain in limbo throughout the 2018-19 season. “Our situation was a little different from the standpoint of it was contracts, but it was on players,” he explained. “It wasn’t necessarily the organization. For instance, Kevin [Durant] took the one-year deal on his own, so that was kinda the elephant in the room.”
“Although Steve [Kerr] would kinda hit on it, like ‘Let’s just enjoy this year for what it is because we don’t know what next year holds,’ it didn’t necessarily carry the same weight because what should have happened was Kevin come out and say, ‘Hey man, like, this is it. So let’s do this. Or, this isn’t it, but you can’t just leave the elephant in the room.”
Green said that he and teammate Klay Thompson were subjected to constant poking and prodding from the media about their future that season, even though they had long expressed their desire to remain with the Warriors for the rest of their careers. Unlike Durant, who kept everything close to the chest.
“Then you kinda had Kevin, like ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do next year, and it don’t matter.’ But it does matter because you’re not the only one that has to answer that question,” Green said before going a bit Super Saiyan on Durant.
“And to be quite frank with you, you’re honestly the last person that has to answer the question because you don’t really say shit,” he continued. “You don’t say much to the media. If anything, you tell them to shut the fuck up. Well, I don’t tell them to shut the fuck up. I kinda have a conversation, and so I’m stuck answering that question all the time, and due to that, there was always an elephant in the room amongst us, as opposed to them [the ‘Last Dance’ Bulls].”
