For all the success the Golden State Warriors have reaped in recent seasons, one would think that those were enough for Draymond Green to forget the pain of their loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals.
Well, no.
Not even winning the Defensive Player of the Year last season would make the memory of the Warriors choking a 3-1 lead in the series fade for Green. In an interview with Leo Sepkowitz of SLAM, Green talked about how low he felt following the historic meltdown.
“It was fucking miserable,” Green says now. “Y’know, going through the offseason, playing as long as we would have to win a championship, but we couldn’t close it out—fucking miserable.”
In that series, Green was famously suspended for Game 5 after hitting the threshold for technical and flagrant fouls when he hit LeBron James in the groin in Game 4. So distraught was Green after Game 7's loss that he claimed to have called Kevin Durant to make a plea for the 2014 NBA MVP to come play in the Bay Area—thing which Durant denied.
The Warriors did get revenge on Cleveland in June, and Green has simply been enjoying their stay on top.
“I feel completely different this summer,” he says. “Last year, there was a dark cloud. Now I’m just on a cloud.”
With the core of the Warriors still intact, the future is far from cloudy for Golden State.
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