The number of fools yappin’ about how Dray needs to go (not here at DNHQ mind you, but seemingly everywhere else) is driving me crazy. That wouldn’t be cutting off your nose to spite your face. It would be cutting out your heart to spite your brain.
The strange thing is that he already publicly talked at length about this (the Clippers argument and everything leading up to it) 18 months ago... literally spent 20-30 minutes out of a 2-hour interview talking about it. I don't remember people reacting the same way but somehow it's an issue now?
Off season. Basketball is on break, football is still in pre-season and nobody except the beat writers pay any attention to baseball until the playoffs. And soccer is that weird game that Europeans play.
The media has picked it up as D and KD throwing management under the bus.
If it were just die hard fans seeing this, they could probably shrug and move on. I’ve got every relative and every friend, fans of multiple teams, gleefully sending me Kerr with tire track memes. Yes, it will pass and the Warriors will be fine. I believe Dray has an easy opportunity to make it better for his team AND continue to keep us entertained. This is part of the show. Draymond knows it. And I’m rooting for my team
Dray and KD, in the spirit of getting it all out there, now need to have Bob and Steve interviewed. Show that it isn’t personal. Let Bob and Steve admit they may have made some mistakes. Let Dray and KD admit that no one is perfect and they have no hard feelings. Let KD admit he was already gone when Dray yelled at him - and that neither management nor his teammates had much to do with it. Let Dray admit he yelled because KD was already gone and he didn’t like how KD was handling the rumors. Or whatever the truth may be.
Remind the world it’s freaking hard to live your life under a microscope but, as grown men, all realize this is a business and everyone is just doing their best.
That would raise the stock of all involved, smooth bumps going forward, and definitely support ticket sales.
Or, Dray could just show up at some public charitable event smiling big with management and move on…
But to leave this hanging now, Dray, would be too much like sweeping it under the rug. We’ve all now seen this one too. Was there a misunderstanding? Is the media making a mountain out of a molehill? I respect the hell out of your honesty and your eloquence. If the FO keeps their mouths shut, it’s on you to clean it up. It should be easy.
The interview is a tempest in a teapot. Still a lot of folks out there with feelings over the Warrior's recent run (and looking at the possible renaissance if Klay can come back at some good percentage of his former self) feeding the flames, but it's a big nothingburger.
Man starting the preseason gap with nothing to talk about but that interview was not a good idea...gonna be a solid month of whether Dray will face repercussions from the FO, and endless trade speculation.
Yesterday NBA xm radio proposed Dray and pieces for Simmons, and that was not considering the interview. They correctly pointed out that Simmons does a lot of things better than Dray, but that Dray is a better leader, isn't afraid to shoot, and can hit at a decent clip when he's on a roll.
And they're both agreeing with each other in the conversation. Pretty weird.
All of this makes me glad that Steph and Klay are on this team. Most stars are such drama queens (Dray and KD included) and these 2 (particularly Steph) just don't give a shit about that macho stuff. It's quite refreshing.
I'm confused, this is bad because it's bad for the warriors?? Derrick White is a phenomenal young player on a team friendly contract, Young is a good vet on an expiring contract, and Wigz is a decent starter on a max contract... I think the only positive here for keeping Wigz is position unless you think he's going to make a huge leap next year and White won't.
White is actually 27, Wiggs is 26 (had to look it up). But I think the main issue would indeed be trading a starting quality wing for a good 6'4" player and a bench wing.
I didn't mean to suggest that White is younger than Wiggs, who's also young and has room for improvement. I just think there's an argument to be made that White is straight up better than Wiggins, at the very least he's had much more consistent success, and even with the slight positional disadvantage (tangent: White could also be considered a wing, bbref says they played him at SF 17% of the time, also here's a video of Mike Schmitz praising White's defense on Luka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbnKXRzhic4) it's hard to say that it wouldn't be worth it to get off of Wiggins irrefutably bad contract, especially when the contract filler piece is someone like Young, a useful bench big on an expiring contract.
That said I think this deal would never get done, but not because it's unfair to us but because the spurs would never do this without substantial draft capital coming back.
You can tell how click-baitey it is when there's 4 pages you have to click thru to get the info. I only made it to the second page. Then i quit caring what they were gonna say. Now i still don't know. Tune in next week to find out if I still don't care, or if the suspense is killing me....
The segment about being locked-in and the one at the end about "happiness" were probably the most interesting to me. Feels like KD was just ready to tackle a new goal. Three straight years of being locked-in and knowing exactly what to do essentially became routine and he just wants to "take on every experience".
Regarding The Argument and how the team handled it, Dray and KD already talked at length in their individual interviews on All the Smoke so none of that was really new info... but it was nice to see them say it to each other face-to-face, with Dray essentially saying "I can cross the line" and KD saying "so do a lot of other players, so it's all cool".
I thought the whole thing was surprisingly philosophical. The argument portion was maybe three minutes of a 20 minute interview. Totally worth a listen. I was surprised by how grounded and “normal” they both seemed. Kids, happiness, life experience… this was not a media interview. I was also struck by how the two seemed friendly, but didn’t seem to have ever been “friends” per se. not enemies for certain, but just like they didn’t know each other all that well.
Nah, that wasn't really it either. It's hard to summarize without leaving out all the nuances... watch it when you can.
Regarding how KD wishes the team handled it, he would've rather had the team sit down and say "Yo, Dray, K, like, that was f***d up that we even had to go through that".
It definitely was full of nuance and should be watched. He made a reference to Pippen and how the Bulls team came together and handled the situation, similar to what you said above.
I can't say I fully comprehend his assessment, but Like KD said only players can understand a situation involving players and I respect that.
I really enjoyed the interview, both of these guys are intelligent, deep thinkers. I think it shows how strong the bond is between this team that they can talk about difficult things and not fear repercussion.
The KD years gave us the greatest basketball play of all time. Those of us who could appreciate it at the time were blessed. And I get some enjoyment that most of the people who agonized over the ruination of the league were the right people to suffer.
KD was never going to stay. He has an artist’s soul, always wandering and looking at the next thing. He was never going to be the most loved in GSW and he deserves his own team where he can be the greatest franchise player ever. He also was never going to be acknowledged as the best player in the world with Steph by his side.
Throw in the extreme soap opera around egos, personality clashes between players and their entourages, the natural burnout from trying to three-peat, the extra two years of burnout from the Original 4, and it’s amazing we got 3 years out of it.
I agree that it was a better team. But I'm not sure the basketball was better. How would you measure "the greatest basketball of all time." Advanced stats? Wins? # of points assisted? Defensive rating? Entertainment value (15- 16!).
At this point, we are splitting hairs. The Warriors were great and their basketball was great all through the Championship Era.
I agree. With the media on full blast against him for years, plus all those natural tensions, the worrier part of me (as opposed to the Warrior part) expected it to end sooner.
That said, Durant invited some of it. His repeated signing of 1-plus-1 contracts led to conversations at the end of every season, as he had to know it would. Will he re-sign? Is he happy? Does he wish he got to iso more? Do Steph and Klay take too many shots? Etc. If he had signed a four year deal, there would have been a LOT less chatter about 'will he or won't he?' They probably still would have stirred the post on how he felt about playing on a team that had won a championship without him, that it was Steph's team, etc.
True! That would have calmed some of the media down... but I think that part of the media was treating him as a regular superstar gets treated in the NBA, nothing too out of the ordinary.
Welp, thanks Kerr & FO for ruining the KD experience for us. Seriously still can't believe a prime KD, Steph, Klay and Dray played together with Iguodala. Looking back at it I can see why the league was helpless. Can't even imagine what that healthy team would have accomplished if it wasn't for "the incident". I can see why the basketball gods had to end it though, it would have made basketball incredibly boring to watch for fans of other teams.
KD and Dray's take on this was dumb. They f'd up by asking Dray to apologize? OK. Kerr acted like it didn't happen. OK.
No one stopped either of these two from having whatever conversation they thought they needed to have. The logic doesn't even add up a little bit.
I love both these guys. KD I know is flakey so whatever. He's gonna have a million more published conversations about this and they'll all be different. From Dray, I'd expect a bit more. This framing he's trying is ridiculous.
The suspension of Draymond at the time was BS. I get why he was upset. Let them handle it. I don’t get the frustration with Kerr as much but maybe KD wants more brutal honesty. Oh well.
Frankly I enjoyed the interview, I respect Draymond, I respect Myers, I respect Kerr and I respect KD. Whats done was done, lets all learn from our mistakes, now lets all move on. See y’all at training camp.
Both KD and Dray saying that the front office f'd it up is bs. No way that was the reason left. Obviously, I'm just assuming but there were all the reports of him already wanting to go, and KD himself has said he was ready to leave before that season.
Totally disagree. I mean I wouldn't even call it an insinuation as much as that's what they directly said.
Dray: ......How much did our argument against the Clippers drive you to ultimately leave the Warriors?
KD: It wasn't the argument. It was the way that everybody - Steve Kerr - acted like it didn't happen. Then Bob Myers tried to just discipline you and think that that would put the mask over everything. ...
Ugh. Durant is a heck of a player, but he has accepted precious little responsibility for his choices. He's luminous on court, but we're seeing some definite flat sides character-wise, IMO. The guy is not a kid; he's over 30. One could wish for more maturity and adult acceptance of responsibility.
KD was leaving no matter what, not sure what was "ruined". As they say, it would have been a threepeat to close out the run if we hadn't had a really rotten run of injury luck.
Somehow, we've defined formal ways to create blinking text and poop emojis (neither of which are all that useful) but there is still not a standardized way to indicate sarcasm on the internet...
I'm still confident that KD made his decision to leave well before that incident. Think it was after the previous season ended (or earlier) and he basically lined his contract up with Kyrie's. Remember Myers' comment after they won about the first year being like a honeymoon and the second year being like a marriage? The discontent was already there imo, that third season was the divorce.
I think there was just a shelf life on that relationship though. KD wanted the ball more than Kerr could reasonably give it to him. Draymond has a lot less value when the ball isn't in his hands, he would have been pretty marginalized and probably complained about it. People don't remember now but there were reports of Klay being dissatisfied with the "crumbs" of the Warrior offense before KD got injured (https://warriorswire.usatoday.com/2019/05/07/klay-thompson-is-tired-of-receiving-crumbs-left-behind-by-other-people/ ).
I think ultimately the "there's only one ball" people ended up accidentally being right. After three Finals appearances and two championships though, so they were still wrong.
The “enough basketballs” issue is one of the reasons I’m excited about. After Steph and Klay, there’s a bunch of guys who can score, but none that seem like they’ll pout if they don’t get “their shots” on any given night. This is one reason I like Poole as 6th man; he gets 7 minutes a half of being “the man” and another 10 or so of being a sidekick.
Draymond and Iggy don’t care whether they take a shot, JTA Looney and Wiggins seem egoless and team first, OPJ and Bjelly seem like they know their role, and the kids are too young to demand anything.
Klay was really better than ever at that point, he was going at Kawhi in Game 6 and winning that matchup. It's very sad to think that he was taken down at the peak of his powers and might not (probably won't?) get back to that level.
"He basically lined his contract up with Kyrie's." That can be true with or without making the final decision to leave, my friend. There's such a thing as keeping your options open.
I think I basically agree with you. It's really unlikely that something like ownership trying to wallpaper over relationships to keep a good thing going would bother basketball players, who likely have to put up with all kinds of management weirdness their whole careers when organizations are staking billions on teens and 20-something young men. It's unlikely tone deaf ownership reactions would affect them much unless KD was already thinking about leaving, as you've said.
But here's my thing: It's weird to me that people talk about this like there's one simple narrative that has to be true at the exclusion of everything else. Many people making big decisions will keep their options open. It seems to me that most of these theories about what caused the move all work pretty well in concert with one another.
The basic basketball fit between the four of them being great, but maybe marginalizing Dray or Klay. KD still wanting to be known as best in the league once he'd reached "best team ever" success. KD getting viciously attacked in the media for years, and a few comments from Bob or others over the years that suggested the front office wasn't ready to go to war for him to win the PR battle against, as I think KD accurately said in the interview, the MANY "Cavs fans" (read: Lebron fans) in the world, including those in the media, who just desperately wanted to see the Warriors lose again under any circumstances.
Compare the way the Warriors organization defended KD in the media with the way Lebron gets fawned over in interviews by media members whose careers he started. Hell, he literally OWNS large pieces of the media.
And then, in year 3, the corporate BS of trying to get the star players to just get along in order to keep a very, very lucrative thing going.
All of these things seem like additive effects that even snowball together pretty inevitably.
To add one more thing (lol), if any of the weirdness of management in the final year DID add to the decision to leave, I still don't think they're really to blame. Ultimately Lacob and friends are about business, and handling things in a slightly awkward HR type of way is behavior that emerges naturally the bigger an organization gets and the more money on the line.
The reality of this quote from the Warriors Wire article..."At the end of the day, it’s hard to imagine the Warriors losing both Durant and Thompson in the same summer, and it’s highly unlikely that it happens."
Yeah, it's crazy despite all of that this team was still so dominating. I would have liked to see a team legit beat that squad before they called it quits. I do agree though. I feel like the tension started the moment Bob Myers made a slight jab at KD during the first championship parade.
Looking forward to it. I feel like discussing this interview (or any of the other two individual ones on ATS) in individual chunks just doesn't work... everyone can always pick apart this bit here or that quote there and spin it into a "Ha! It was ____'s fault!" when in reality, if one just listens to all three interviews in full, you get a much more nuanced but accurate perspective.
Wonder if this will cause some tension between the FO and Draymond. I know he isn't afraid to speak his mind but damn... pretty much trashed them right there.
I doubt it. Bob seems like an incredibly forgiving, roll with people type of person, who also doesn't seem to care much about his own public image. And I'm guessing there was immense pressure from ownership to do things that way.
Curious to see the documentary about the Steph era Warriors run as a whole 10-15 years from now. Wonder if we'll hear unexpected stuff like Lacob never liked Draymond or Klay slept with Omri Casspi's girlfriend that's why he was afraid to shoot the ball.
I would be surprised if it did. It was long enough ago and the team has gone through a lot together since then. Bob and Draymond remain close and so do Draymond and Steve. Competitive people have disagreements sometimes, I think it's a sign of strength and not weakness to be frank and truthful about that.
Yeah, it's more from Bob's side. I wonder how he would feel about Draymond telling the world he laughed to his face even though it did actually happen. It just looks bad from a PR perspective. Idk just me overanalyzing things
FYI new post and thread by Duby up now
The number of fools yappin’ about how Dray needs to go (not here at DNHQ mind you, but seemingly everywhere else) is driving me crazy. That wouldn’t be cutting off your nose to spite your face. It would be cutting out your heart to spite your brain.
The strange thing is that he already publicly talked at length about this (the Clippers argument and everything leading up to it) 18 months ago... literally spent 20-30 minutes out of a 2-hour interview talking about it. I don't remember people reacting the same way but somehow it's an issue now?
Off season. Basketball is on break, football is still in pre-season and nobody except the beat writers pay any attention to baseball until the playoffs. And soccer is that weird game that Europeans play.
bingo
The media has picked it up as D and KD throwing management under the bus.
If it were just die hard fans seeing this, they could probably shrug and move on. I’ve got every relative and every friend, fans of multiple teams, gleefully sending me Kerr with tire track memes. Yes, it will pass and the Warriors will be fine. I believe Dray has an easy opportunity to make it better for his team AND continue to keep us entertained. This is part of the show. Draymond knows it. And I’m rooting for my team
Drays not going anywhere. Everyone, including Dray, knows how important he is to this team.
Dray and KD, in the spirit of getting it all out there, now need to have Bob and Steve interviewed. Show that it isn’t personal. Let Bob and Steve admit they may have made some mistakes. Let Dray and KD admit that no one is perfect and they have no hard feelings. Let KD admit he was already gone when Dray yelled at him - and that neither management nor his teammates had much to do with it. Let Dray admit he yelled because KD was already gone and he didn’t like how KD was handling the rumors. Or whatever the truth may be.
Remind the world it’s freaking hard to live your life under a microscope but, as grown men, all realize this is a business and everyone is just doing their best.
That would raise the stock of all involved, smooth bumps going forward, and definitely support ticket sales.
Or, Dray could just show up at some public charitable event smiling big with management and move on…
But to leave this hanging now, Dray, would be too much like sweeping it under the rug. We’ve all now seen this one too. Was there a misunderstanding? Is the media making a mountain out of a molehill? I respect the hell out of your honesty and your eloquence. If the FO keeps their mouths shut, it’s on you to clean it up. It should be easy.
The interview is a tempest in a teapot. Still a lot of folks out there with feelings over the Warrior's recent run (and looking at the possible renaissance if Klay can come back at some good percentage of his former self) feeding the flames, but it's a big nothingburger.
Exactly.
Man starting the preseason gap with nothing to talk about but that interview was not a good idea...gonna be a solid month of whether Dray will face repercussions from the FO, and endless trade speculation.
Yesterday NBA xm radio proposed Dray and pieces for Simmons, and that was not considering the interview. They correctly pointed out that Simmons does a lot of things better than Dray, but that Dray is a better leader, isn't afraid to shoot, and can hit at a decent clip when he's on a roll.
Draymond is a post season player. He gets BETTER, which is very rare. You don’t trade him for Ben “regular season” Simmons.
Did not say I agreed with what they were proposing, just repeating their convo.
Yeah I feel you, not directed at you, just their “argument” I guess is the word.
BBIQ wise, Simmons is waaaay below Dray. And besides, Morey wants a star star, not someone more like Simmons...not gonna happen straight up.
Now a 3 way deal w the Blazers involved? Could work, but again very doubtful
I didn't know Draymond had a show called "Chips".
I know now.
Draymond 1, rest of world 0.
They should play the theme song to CHiPS
I really think they should be eating chips while doing the show. Big missed opportunity.
Gamesmanship being played by gamesmen during the off-season.
KD: They did nothing
Draymond: They shouldn't have done anything
And they're both agreeing with each other in the conversation. Pretty weird.
All of this makes me glad that Steph and Klay are on this team. Most stars are such drama queens (Dray and KD included) and these 2 (particularly Steph) just don't give a shit about that macho stuff. It's quite refreshing.
Agree 100%
Dray for Simmons. I would like to see Dray play with Embiid demanding the ball
This might be the worst Andrew Wiggins trade proposed yet: https://www.nbaanalysis.net/2021/08/17/nba-rumors-san-antonio-spurs-golden-state-warriors-trade-centered-andrew-wiggins/
What???
I'm confused, this is bad because it's bad for the warriors?? Derrick White is a phenomenal young player on a team friendly contract, Young is a good vet on an expiring contract, and Wigz is a decent starter on a max contract... I think the only positive here for keeping Wigz is position unless you think he's going to make a huge leap next year and White won't.
White is actually 27, Wiggs is 26 (had to look it up). But I think the main issue would indeed be trading a starting quality wing for a good 6'4" player and a bench wing.
I didn't mean to suggest that White is younger than Wiggs, who's also young and has room for improvement. I just think there's an argument to be made that White is straight up better than Wiggins, at the very least he's had much more consistent success, and even with the slight positional disadvantage (tangent: White could also be considered a wing, bbref says they played him at SF 17% of the time, also here's a video of Mike Schmitz praising White's defense on Luka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbnKXRzhic4) it's hard to say that it wouldn't be worth it to get off of Wiggins irrefutably bad contract, especially when the contract filler piece is someone like Young, a useful bench big on an expiring contract.
That said I think this deal would never get done, but not because it's unfair to us but because the spurs would never do this without substantial draft capital coming back.
Kinda clickbait. Like the Captain said, it is nice that he is wanted now though...
You can tell how click-baitey it is when there's 4 pages you have to click thru to get the info. I only made it to the second page. Then i quit caring what they were gonna say. Now i still don't know. Tune in next week to find out if I still don't care, or if the suspense is killing me....
The second I scrolled down and realized I’d have to treasure hunt their shitty proposal I clicked off lol. I hate the internet sometimes
"Let me tell you a story about whether or not I care, starting from my childhood..."
Hey, at least they WANT Wiggins now. Before he was just a throw in
Man, Dray is so gone 😂 .
So, Dray to Blazers, CJ to Sixers, Simmons to Warriors , done 💥
I really like the interview .
🤣
The segment about being locked-in and the one at the end about "happiness" were probably the most interesting to me. Feels like KD was just ready to tackle a new goal. Three straight years of being locked-in and knowing exactly what to do essentially became routine and he just wants to "take on every experience".
Regarding The Argument and how the team handled it, Dray and KD already talked at length in their individual interviews on All the Smoke so none of that was really new info... but it was nice to see them say it to each other face-to-face, with Dray essentially saying "I can cross the line" and KD saying "so do a lot of other players, so it's all cool".
I haven’t listened to it, but that sounds like KD doesn’t think he’s at culpable?
I thought the whole thing was surprisingly philosophical. The argument portion was maybe three minutes of a 20 minute interview. Totally worth a listen. I was surprised by how grounded and “normal” they both seemed. Kids, happiness, life experience… this was not a media interview. I was also struck by how the two seemed friendly, but didn’t seem to have ever been “friends” per se. not enemies for certain, but just like they didn’t know each other all that well.
Nah, that wasn't really it either. It's hard to summarize without leaving out all the nuances... watch it when you can.
Regarding how KD wishes the team handled it, he would've rather had the team sit down and say "Yo, Dray, K, like, that was f***d up that we even had to go through that".
It definitely was full of nuance and should be watched. He made a reference to Pippen and how the Bulls team came together and handled the situation, similar to what you said above.
I can't say I fully comprehend his assessment, but Like KD said only players can understand a situation involving players and I respect that.
I really enjoyed the interview, both of these guys are intelligent, deep thinkers. I think it shows how strong the bond is between this team that they can talk about difficult things and not fear repercussion.
Rather than dance around it and pretend nothing happened.
Anybody got the rookies full summer league stats
The KD years gave us the greatest basketball play of all time. Those of us who could appreciate it at the time were blessed. And I get some enjoyment that most of the people who agonized over the ruination of the league were the right people to suffer.
KD was never going to stay. He has an artist’s soul, always wandering and looking at the next thing. He was never going to be the most loved in GSW and he deserves his own team where he can be the greatest franchise player ever. He also was never going to be acknowledged as the best player in the world with Steph by his side.
Throw in the extreme soap opera around egos, personality clashes between players and their entourages, the natural burnout from trying to three-peat, the extra two years of burnout from the Original 4, and it’s amazing we got 3 years out of it.
Personally, I preferred the 73 win season, pre-KD.
I’m fonder of 15-16, but I would say 16-17 was a greater team
I agree that it was a better team. But I'm not sure the basketball was better. How would you measure "the greatest basketball of all time." Advanced stats? Wins? # of points assisted? Defensive rating? Entertainment value (15- 16!).
At this point, we are splitting hairs. The Warriors were great and their basketball was great all through the Championship Era.
Fair enough. I normally don’t get into “greatest” conversations because they usually end up being a duel of definitions.
I agree. With the media on full blast against him for years, plus all those natural tensions, the worrier part of me (as opposed to the Warrior part) expected it to end sooner.
The media can be jerks.
That said, Durant invited some of it. His repeated signing of 1-plus-1 contracts led to conversations at the end of every season, as he had to know it would. Will he re-sign? Is he happy? Does he wish he got to iso more? Do Steph and Klay take too many shots? Etc. If he had signed a four year deal, there would have been a LOT less chatter about 'will he or won't he?' They probably still would have stirred the post on how he felt about playing on a team that had won a championship without him, that it was Steph's team, etc.
True! That would have calmed some of the media down... but I think that part of the media was treating him as a regular superstar gets treated in the NBA, nothing too out of the ordinary.
Welp, thanks Kerr & FO for ruining the KD experience for us. Seriously still can't believe a prime KD, Steph, Klay and Dray played together with Iguodala. Looking back at it I can see why the league was helpless. Can't even imagine what that healthy team would have accomplished if it wasn't for "the incident". I can see why the basketball gods had to end it though, it would have made basketball incredibly boring to watch for fans of other teams.
KD and Dray's take on this was dumb. They f'd up by asking Dray to apologize? OK. Kerr acted like it didn't happen. OK.
No one stopped either of these two from having whatever conversation they thought they needed to have. The logic doesn't even add up a little bit.
I love both these guys. KD I know is flakey so whatever. He's gonna have a million more published conversations about this and they'll all be different. From Dray, I'd expect a bit more. This framing he's trying is ridiculous.
The suspension of Draymond at the time was BS. I get why he was upset. Let them handle it. I don’t get the frustration with Kerr as much but maybe KD wants more brutal honesty. Oh well.
Frankly I enjoyed the interview, I respect Draymond, I respect Myers, I respect Kerr and I respect KD. Whats done was done, lets all learn from our mistakes, now lets all move on. See y’all at training camp.
The suspension doesn’t matter.
Drays saying he needed to communicate to KD what he needed to say. Not Bob Myers words. His words.
KD saying he needed to have it out w the team.
Who’s stopping these guys from doing that? No one.
Yeah… players only meetings happen… they’re adults and can do their own thing if they want.
Both KD and Dray saying that the front office f'd it up is bs. No way that was the reason left. Obviously, I'm just assuming but there were all the reports of him already wanting to go, and KD himself has said he was ready to leave before that season.
> Both KD and Dray saying that the front office f'd it up is bs. No way that was the reason left.
Nobody said that was the reason KD left. They just said the FO f'd that particular thing up.
It was kind of insinuated. Dray started out the question with "was this why you left"
He asked if HIS actions were why KD left and the answer was no.
So, no, it was not insinuated.
Totally disagree. I mean I wouldn't even call it an insinuation as much as that's what they directly said.
Dray: ......How much did our argument against the Clippers drive you to ultimately leave the Warriors?
KD: It wasn't the argument. It was the way that everybody - Steve Kerr - acted like it didn't happen. Then Bob Myers tried to just discipline you and think that that would put the mask over everything. ...
Ugh. Durant is a heck of a player, but he has accepted precious little responsibility for his choices. He's luminous on court, but we're seeing some definite flat sides character-wise, IMO. The guy is not a kid; he's over 30. One could wish for more maturity and adult acceptance of responsibility.
KD was leaving no matter what, not sure what was "ruined". As they say, it would have been a threepeat to close out the run if we hadn't had a really rotten run of injury luck.
Lol I needed a joking font there
Sarcasm… one thing that doesn’t translate to text. I know this, yet I continue to make the same error all the time.
Somehow, we've defined formal ways to create blinking text and poop emojis (neither of which are all that useful) but there is still not a standardized way to indicate sarcasm on the internet...
/s
That's kind of my point, it's a casual convention.
:) is to 🙂 as /s is to ___?
I'm still confident that KD made his decision to leave well before that incident. Think it was after the previous season ended (or earlier) and he basically lined his contract up with Kyrie's. Remember Myers' comment after they won about the first year being like a honeymoon and the second year being like a marriage? The discontent was already there imo, that third season was the divorce.
I think there was just a shelf life on that relationship though. KD wanted the ball more than Kerr could reasonably give it to him. Draymond has a lot less value when the ball isn't in his hands, he would have been pretty marginalized and probably complained about it. People don't remember now but there were reports of Klay being dissatisfied with the "crumbs" of the Warrior offense before KD got injured (https://warriorswire.usatoday.com/2019/05/07/klay-thompson-is-tired-of-receiving-crumbs-left-behind-by-other-people/ ).
I think ultimately the "there's only one ball" people ended up accidentally being right. After three Finals appearances and two championships though, so they were still wrong.
The “enough basketballs” issue is one of the reasons I’m excited about. After Steph and Klay, there’s a bunch of guys who can score, but none that seem like they’ll pout if they don’t get “their shots” on any given night. This is one reason I like Poole as 6th man; he gets 7 minutes a half of being “the man” and another 10 or so of being a sidekick.
Draymond and Iggy don’t care whether they take a shot, JTA Looney and Wiggins seem egoless and team first, OPJ and Bjelly seem like they know their role, and the kids are too young to demand anything.
I get what Klay is thinking with the crumbs thing but it's funny because his scoring didn't drop
Also at least Klay backed up his complaints with going crazy in the finals after KD got injured
Klay was really better than ever at that point, he was going at Kawhi in Game 6 and winning that matchup. It's very sad to think that he was taken down at the peak of his powers and might not (probably won't?) get back to that level.
KD has basically gotten back to the level he was playing at before. Hoping Klay can do the same.
"He basically lined his contract up with Kyrie's." That can be true with or without making the final decision to leave, my friend. There's such a thing as keeping your options open.
I think I basically agree with you. It's really unlikely that something like ownership trying to wallpaper over relationships to keep a good thing going would bother basketball players, who likely have to put up with all kinds of management weirdness their whole careers when organizations are staking billions on teens and 20-something young men. It's unlikely tone deaf ownership reactions would affect them much unless KD was already thinking about leaving, as you've said.
But here's my thing: It's weird to me that people talk about this like there's one simple narrative that has to be true at the exclusion of everything else. Many people making big decisions will keep their options open. It seems to me that most of these theories about what caused the move all work pretty well in concert with one another.
The basic basketball fit between the four of them being great, but maybe marginalizing Dray or Klay. KD still wanting to be known as best in the league once he'd reached "best team ever" success. KD getting viciously attacked in the media for years, and a few comments from Bob or others over the years that suggested the front office wasn't ready to go to war for him to win the PR battle against, as I think KD accurately said in the interview, the MANY "Cavs fans" (read: Lebron fans) in the world, including those in the media, who just desperately wanted to see the Warriors lose again under any circumstances.
Compare the way the Warriors organization defended KD in the media with the way Lebron gets fawned over in interviews by media members whose careers he started. Hell, he literally OWNS large pieces of the media.
And then, in year 3, the corporate BS of trying to get the star players to just get along in order to keep a very, very lucrative thing going.
All of these things seem like additive effects that even snowball together pretty inevitably.
Oh my god... wall of text. Sorry all.
To add one more thing (lol), if any of the weirdness of management in the final year DID add to the decision to leave, I still don't think they're really to blame. Ultimately Lacob and friends are about business, and handling things in a slightly awkward HR type of way is behavior that emerges naturally the bigger an organization gets and the more money on the line.
The reality of this quote from the Warriors Wire article..."At the end of the day, it’s hard to imagine the Warriors losing both Durant and Thompson in the same summer, and it’s highly unlikely that it happens."
....welp
Yeah.
KD wanting to be known as the best in the league was bound to clash with the "strength-in-numbers" mantra sooner or later.
Yeah, it's crazy despite all of that this team was still so dominating. I would have liked to see a team legit beat that squad before they called it quits. I do agree though. I feel like the tension started the moment Bob Myers made a slight jab at KD during the first championship parade.
He probably realized that was /never/ going to happen. He'd have spent the rest of his career dominating the league on a historically good team.
Dray$ + KD interview dropped…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3x6DjeJNd64&feature=emb_title
we'll have a full write up on this for us all up here tomorrow
Looking forward to it. I feel like discussing this interview (or any of the other two individual ones on ATS) in individual chunks just doesn't work... everyone can always pick apart this bit here or that quote there and spin it into a "Ha! It was ____'s fault!" when in reality, if one just listens to all three interviews in full, you get a much more nuanced but accurate perspective.
Best basketball interview I've ever seen.
Also... front office say oops :P
Wonder if this will cause some tension between the FO and Draymond. I know he isn't afraid to speak his mind but damn... pretty much trashed them right there.
I doubt it. He already said WAAAY more than was covered in this interview.
This was back in Apr. 2020:
https://youtu.be/2vxvQY1GSTw?t=5668
Draymond suspended for first game of the season
*Traded for Harry Barnes. :-)
He has said pretty much the same thing before and it's not like Green and Kerr haven't butted heads before either.
I doubt it. Bob seems like an incredibly forgiving, roll with people type of person, who also doesn't seem to care much about his own public image. And I'm guessing there was immense pressure from ownership to do things that way.
Curious to see the documentary about the Steph era Warriors run as a whole 10-15 years from now. Wonder if we'll hear unexpected stuff like Lacob never liked Draymond or Klay slept with Omri Casspi's girlfriend that's why he was afraid to shoot the ball.
lol!! Not Omri...
:)
"Just keep us NBA champions for another 4 years and we're looking at a 10x return"
I would be surprised if it did. It was long enough ago and the team has gone through a lot together since then. Bob and Draymond remain close and so do Draymond and Steve. Competitive people have disagreements sometimes, I think it's a sign of strength and not weakness to be frank and truthful about that.
Yeah, it's more from Bob's side. I wonder how he would feel about Draymond telling the world he laughed to his face even though it did actually happen. It just looks bad from a PR perspective. Idk just me overanalyzing things
It's only kind of touchy IMO because he's still playing for them.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/guufsF0Az3Lpu/200.gif