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Draymond Green thinks his preseason incident with teammate Jordan Poole negatively impacted the Golden State Warriors’ season.
On ESPN during Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals on Tuesday night, Green theorized that his punch of Poole and the ensuing fallout cost the team a chance at a championship.
“We’re not playing right now, because when you speak about the fouling, when you speak about all of the slippage we had as a team on the road, not being able to come together,” Green told Stephen A. Smith. “None of those things happen if that doesn’t happen, because the voice that I am and the departments that I lead this team in, there was a ton of slippage due to me sitting back, me not saying anything, me trying to allow that situation to play itself out and give it time to heal.”
Draymond speaks on how his altercation with Jordan Poole affected Warriors’ season.@Money23Green | @stephenasmith pic.twitter.com/ZSSE3yhyE2
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Green went on to say that it took him several months to resume his typical leadership role with the Warriors, and that precious lost time cost the team in the long run.
“I would say probably about February I started to feel like myself again and speak more,” he explained. “But guess what, there was five months of the season where slippage has just been occurring. And by February, if that slippage has been going on that long, you are who you are. At that point, you’ve built those habits, that is who you are now.
“So to try and correct them then, it’s like OK you might get a little better, we did, we ended up in the second round of the playoffs. But not at a championship level.”
Green is not the only member of the Golden State family to espouse this theory.
Head coach Steve Kerr said Tuesday that the team’s collective trust, or lack thereof, was a major issue this year, and that the Green-Poole fight helped fuel that problem.
“There’s no hiding from it — the incident with Draymond and Jordan at the beginning of the year played a role in that,” Kerr said. “It’s hard for that not to impact a team.”
Golden State finished sixth in the Western Conference, and after beating the Sacramento Kings in the first round of the playoffs, fell to the Los Angeles Lakers in six games in the second round.