Getty Draymond Green reacts to a play against the Utah Jazz.
Draymond Green has earned a reputation as one of the most intense players in the NBA, which makes his admission about the first Golden State Warriors season after the team’s NBA Finals run ended that much more stunning.
Green opened up about the frustrations he felt during the 2019-20 season, when the Warriors came off the high of five straight trips to the NBA Finals and sunk to the bottom of the NBA. The Warriors veteran said the sharp downturn caused him to lose some of his famous passion for the game.
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Green’s Tough Season
As Dalton Johnson of NBC Sports Bay Area pointed out, this was entirely uncharted territory for Green, who had only known winning teams on the Warriors and dating back to his college years with Michigan State. Green had some of the lowest output of his career in the 2019-20 season, including his worst defensive rating and the worst offensive rating since his second year in the league.
Green admitted to The Ringer’s Logan Murdock that he had trouble finding his passion for the game.
“I wasn’t interested in the game,” Green said.
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“It was just a totally different situation that I was dealing with for the first time in my life on top of the abruptness of it,” Green said. “You couldn’t have told me three months before that I would go from the best team ever to the f–king worst team in the NBA.
“It was frustrating. And it was also a mind-f–k.”
Green Has Doubts About Team’s New Approach
After two consecutive seasons that fell short of the playoffs, the Warriors are hoping to jump back into title contention with the expected return of Thompson and the addition of two lottery picks in Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody. But Green has shown some skepticism of the approach, noting that teams trying to run with a mix of veterans and more unpolished young players typically don’t get very far.
“Historically we have not seen that work where you’ve kind of got a mix of old, I wouldn’t say any of us are old, but older, Andre [Iguodala’s] old as s–t actually,” Green said, via Alex Didion of NBC Sports Bay Area. “But a mixture of experience and hardly any experience, historically I think in just being a fan of the NBA, I can’t recall the last time you’ve seen someone have success with that, but in saying that that is our situation. So, you do what you got to do to make that situation work.”
Green has reportedly pushed back against some other plans, with recent reports that he and Steph Curry wanted the team to keep veteran guard Avery Bradley, who was ultimately released.
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