Steve Kerr has consistently been quite candid anytime he’s discussed where things went somewhat awry last season for the Golden State Warriors, but his recent assertion that the Draymond Green-Kevin Durant feud wasn’t “that big of a deal” arguably doesn’t pass the smell test.
The now-infamous feud between the two then-teammates all started with an on-court confrontation in November. It was arguably the first time the Warriors encountered any semblance of organizational dysfunction during their dynastic run.
While the Warriors did eventually recover from any harm caused by the evident dissonance between Durant and Green, it nevertheless seemed at the time that the feud could potentially derail the Warriors’ season.
Looking back now at one of the biggest stories of the 2018-19 NBA season, Kerr opined in a recent appearance on “The Full 48″ podcast with Howard Beck of Bleacher Report that in retrospect, it was all much ado about nothing.
“It just felt like it … and I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought — it just felt different, this past year felt different,” Kerr said, as transcribed by Clutch Points. “We kind of lost some momentum internally, it wasn’t anything tangible. People point to the Draymond-Kevin incident. I honestly don’t think that was that big of a deal, as crazy as that sounds. I think it was just sort of — for whatever reason — it just sort of ran its course.”
Kerr himself acknowledges that it sounds odd to downplay the feud, and the case can be made that the Warriors head coach is engaging in a bit of revisionist history. That said, both Durant and Green ultimately did their parts to defuse the situation, and the Warriors reached the NBA Finals, albeit only to come up short against the Toronto Raptors.
In the end, skirmishes, feuds and the like occur frequently on teams. The very public nature of the situation involving Green and Durant is what made it seem so potentially debilitating for the Warriors and compelling for onlookers. To say that the drama wasn’t “that big of a deal,” however, seems like a bit of a stretch.
