The NBA world has been engulfed in recent days by the physical altercation that took place at the Golden State Warriors practice last week.
Draymond Green and Jordan Poole were verbally sparring with each other before things got even more heated.
Eventually, the two got chest-to-chest, which is when Poole shoved Green away from him. Green would retaliate, throwing a punch at his teammate and connecting in the face. The video of the incident going viral the day after certainly didn’t help the situation.
Many people have weighed in on what occurred and offered opinions. While some have said that it is something they have seen, Kevin Durant is one player that noted a fight to that extent isn’t something he has ever witnessed.
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Durant knows the inner workings of the Warriors better than most people as he spent three seasons with the team. He made sure to state that none of it is his business, but he does hope they can move past it.
“I know that group,” Durant said, per ESPN’s Nick Friedell. “That’s a strong group, tight-knit group. And I just hate to see that be seen in the public, what’s going on in practices and stuff. But hopefully, they get that figured out and we can move forward.”
Durant also had a dust-up with Green during his time in Golden State. The two had a very public verbal disagreement that reached a boiling point during a game in November of 2019. It carried into the locker room and had an impact on the team’s chemistry.
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However, Durant noted that verbal disagreements, such as the one that he and Green had, occurs often in the NBA. Comparing what he was involved in, to what occurred at their practice last week, is totally different.
“That’s not the same situation,” Durant said. “Somebody got punched in the face. … It’s no comparison to that. It was just some words that being—I heard people say that that happens a lot in the NBA. I had never seen nothing like that before. But what me and Draymond did a few years back, that s–t happens all the time. So it’s easy to get through something like that, but I don’t know what this situation is like.”
This is something that Green is going to have to live with for the rest of his basketball career and figure out a way to move past. He has issued apologies, but words can only do so much to repair the relationship that the two had.
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Poole reportedly has not forgiven Green for what he did and it is hard to blame him. Getting punched by a teammate in that fashion is an embarrassing situation to be a part of, but for it to go public in the manner it did with a leaked video makes it that much tougher to handle.
