Draymond Green Had No Intention of Playing for Warriors After Kevin Durant Left

Kevin Durant stormed into the Bay Area in 2016, dominated the league with the Golden State Warriors alongside future Hall of Famers, won two rings and two Finals MVPs, and then left after just three years. It was a heavenly time for Warriors fans, but it didn’t exactly end on a good note.

In Durant’s final season, the Warriors lost to the Raptors in the Finals. It was during that series that Klay Thompson tore his ACL, and shortly after, Stephen Curry broke his hand. The 2019–20 season was destined to be painful. The once-feared dynasty had been reduced to rubble.

Draymond Green remembers that time well. In fact, he revealed in a recent interview on The Boardroom that he had zero interest in playing basketball that year. Why? Because of how far the team had fallen. Durant was gone to Brooklyn, and both Steph and Klay were sidelined.

“We were awful. I had zero interest in playing. I mean, we had just come off five straight NBA Finals. We were the best team in the world,” recalled Dray. “And now I’m out here with 10, maybe 11 guys who were out of the league within a year.”

Draymond says he had no interest in playing in the 2019-20 season:

“One of the worst feelings I ever had was the year we sucked. It was right after KD left. Klay was hurt. Steph was hurt. We were awful. I had zero interest in playing. I mean, we had just come off five straight… pic.twitter.com/7d5VjGjCqQ

— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) October 24, 2025

Green had to lead players like Eric Paschall, Omari Spellman, and Alen Smailagić. While they deserved respect for making it to the NBA, they were nowhere near ready to compete for a top-tier team that had been dominating the league just months earlier. Steve Kerr is a great coach, but even he couldn’t get consistent production out of such an inexperienced and unpolished group.

Draymond reiterated that he wasn’t disrespecting those guys. “No disrespect to them, but they weren’t Steph. They weren’t Klay. They weren’t KD. They weren’t Shaun Livingston. The competitiveness just wasn’t the same.”

“And I was just going through the motions. I remember being on the floor and hearing guys say stuff like, ‘Yeah, you old now, you can’t do it no more,'” he added. You would think someone uttering that to Green would motivate him to do better. But even he knew that without his friends, he was cooked.

It’s not like Dray was an offensive guru either. In the 2019-2020 season, he averaged 8 points, 6.2 steals, and 6.2 rebounds per game. The team finished 15-50 before the COVID-19 outbreak halted the remainder of the season.

That season was a brutal wake-up call for Draymond and the Warriors. After years of dominance, the dynasty hit rock bottom, and even Green couldn’t carry a depleted roster. But that struggle lit a fire under the core, reminding them how hard it is to stay on top. Once everyone got healthy, the Warriors proved they still had plenty left in the tank. All hail their 2021/22 championship run.

About the author

Joseph Galizia

Joseph is a Las Vegas based actor and circus performer. For the last seven years he's had the pleasure of covering sports for multiple outlets, including the Lifestyles section of Sports Illustrated. In that time, he's conducted over 50 interviews with athletes, filmmakers, and company founders to further cement his footprint in the journalism world. He's excited to bring that skillset to the SportsRush, where he'll be covering the NBA news cycle.

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