Former Golden State Warriors big man David West believes he could have stopped the Draymond Green-Kevin Durant bench argument in Los Angeles from escalating the way it did.
Against the Clippers last month, Draymond Green dribbled the ball up the court while Kevin Durant was screaming and clapping for the ball. Green turned the ball over, sending the game into overtime. Golden State eventually lost, but what happened on the bench after Green's turnover was the bigger story.
Green didn't like the way Durant was talking to him, so the former Defensive Player of the Year started calling Durant “a bit*h” and challenged the two-time Finals MVP about his impending free agency. It was an incident that hung over the franchise like a dark cloud for a few weeks.
David West is a firm believer that if he was still on the team, the whole thing could have been avoided.
“I’m gonna be honest,” West told The Athletic's Sam Amick by phone last month. “The only moment (where) I said, ‘Man, I wish I was there,’ was at that Clippers game. When Draymond turned the ball over at the end — and he was going to create the play; he was going to make the play, it just sometimes doesn’t happen — at that moment, when I saw the way he was walking, and I saw KD react, and it was like ‘Oh, I know if I was there that shit wouldn’t have happened.’ That’s the only moment where I felt like, ‘Man I could’ve stopped it.’ ”
Both Kevin Durant and Draymond Green have moved past the event and the Warriors are starting to look like the Warriors again. It helps that star point guard Stephen Curry is back in the lineup after missing a handful of games with an adductor strain.
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