Four-time NBA champion Draymond Green responded to his former Golden State Warriors teammate, Kevin Durant, after the current Houston Rockets star credited offenses for winning championships.
An excerpt of Netflix’s series “Starting 5” shows Durant highlighting the importance of scoring to win games.
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“You have to score baskets if you want to win a championship,” Durant said. “Playing defense, we can get any of y’all in here to bend your legs… that’s easy.”
“When you talk about winning at a high level, against the best of the best, you cannot just do that and win a basketball game. You have to make shots.”
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In an interview with The Athletic, Green discussed Durant’s comments, rivaling him and siding with defenses. Green
“I think when you look at any team that won a championship, they had a great defense,” Green said. “And if you look at most teams that couldn’t quite get over the hump, oftentimes it’s (because) they couldn’t get stops. That fact still remains, and I think that those who don’t believe it, don’t win. It’s very simple. Those who don’t believe defense is as valuable as it is, they simply just don’t win. I don’t think anyone’s ever really been hell-bent on caring about the opinion of those that don’t win, because your opinion equals zero.”
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Green and Durant played together from 2016 through 2019. They played three consecutive Finals, winning two championships in the process. The Warriors marked an era at the end of the 2010s, and the combination of suffocating defense with players like Green, Andre Iguodala and Klay Thompson, and the sharp offense led by Durant and Stephen Curry, made them unstoppable.
They are on different fronts now, but both players continue to chase another title. Durant won his only two championships in Golden State while the Warriors won before and after him.
The Houston Rockets look like potential contenders this season, and the Warriors are playing at a high level again.
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