Green was already working on that as he left Oracle Arena after that gutting Game 7 loss. Green sat in his car in the parking and called Myers, telling him he had to sign Durant. “It’s on you,” Green told Myers.
Green hung up, stayed in the parking lot, and made another call -- to Durant. “That was my very next call,” Green said. Two weeks later, Durant signed a maximum contract that put him in a Golden State uniform for at least one season, with several more seasons likely to come.
Durant, you remember that call?
“That’s false. A hundred percent false,” Durant said Sunday.
Pressed to explain the timeline then, Durant passed saying he wanted to stay in this moment, not the past.
“I’ve been talking about this all season,” Durant said. “Like, I’m tired of it. At this point I’m not mad or anything, but I’m just saying at this point in The Finals, I’m trying to stay where we are. I’m trying to stay locked in. And like it’s been the whole year now, so it’s over.”
This happened almost a year ago, maybe they remember it differently. The call could have been later that night, or the next day. Green said on Sunday he never says anything he doesn’t mean, I don’t doubt Durant, but if this were a court of law, we could create reasonable doubt.
But it’s not — we’re just talking about basketball. We as fans love the details, we want to know how and why things happened. Warriors critics will find fault in all of this. However, in the long term, Durant is right in that in a decade from now we will talk about the title (or titles) this Warriors team won, how they played beautifully together, how the game evolved because of their shooting, but not much about the recruitment of Durant.
