THIS LEAGUE: Kevin Durant Calls Out Draymond Green For Trying To Downplay How Important The Offense Was To The Warriors' Titles

Bart Young. Getty Images.

In one of the Netflix Starting 5 episodes, Kevin Durant very correctly explained how important offense and shotmaking are when it comes to winning a title in the NBA. Given his resume, I'd say he's qualified to weigh in on such a topic 

As someone who experienced both ends of the spectrum when it comes to their favorite team's performance in the Finals, I couldn't agree more. Having an elite defense is important, no doubt about it. But you need more to ultimately win the title. You need to be able to score. I watched the 2022 Celtics, one of the best defenses of this modern era, lose 3 straight games to lose their title despite only allowing 107, 104, and 103 points. The problem? They failed to break 98 points themselves in any of those games. Their Game 2 loss? 107-88. 

In 2024, I saw what happened when you combined elite defense with generational offense and shotmaking. What it you might be wondering? They won their 18th championship.

Because it was KD, of course people dragged him for his statement…..despite it being 1000% correct. I wouldn't even call it a hot take. It's just, how things are. 

Naturally, something like this got back to Draymond Green, who lives on the opposite end of this spectrum. He's a defense-first guy with limited scoring impact. Great passer, beyond elite defender, so it's no surprise he had the exact opposite stance

Draymond Green fires back at Kevin Durant’s claim that offense wins championships  

Draymond: “Those who don’t believe defense is as valuable as it is, they simply just don’t win. I don’t think anyone’s ever really been hell-bent on caring about the opinion of those that don’t win, because your opinion equals zero.” 

Reporter: “So I hear you, but Kevin has won.” 

Draymond: “He won here, (and) the defense here was…” 

Reporter: “It was incredible.” 

Draymond: “Absolutely.”

You know what that means

Given that it's an off day for the Rockets, it should surprise nobody that KD himself had some time to jump back into this conversation

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I found this funny for a few reasons. For starters, KD is once again correct. The Warriors' 2016-17 title? They scored 113, 132, 118, and 129 points in their 4 wins. The 2017-18 title? Wins scoring 124, 122, 110 and 108. The offensive production from the Warriors (KD) was a massive, massive part of both of those titles. For Draymond to suggest it wasn't is kind of weird if we're being honest. Nobody is saying the defense wasn't good or wasn't important either! There's no need to be defensive about it (no pun intended but intended)!

But by far the funniest part is the fact that Draymond must think nobody remembers the 2016 Finals? You know, the one where the Warriors blew that 3-1 lead? You may remember the Warriors scoring 90, 97, 101, and 89 points in those 4 losses. It was so bad, that Draymond himself reportedly begged KD to join GS. Why might that have been, do you think? Because KD is an offensive cheat code! You combine his offense with the Warriors' elite defense, and you have a dynasty.

What happened? The Warriors had a dynasty! 

As I've said before, there are a lot of terrible aspects to the internet and social media in 2025. But being able to see players call out bullshit and go back and forth on the timeline isn't one of them. Especially KD who is an all time poster and certainly not reluctant to get into some back and forth while he has some time to kill. Sometimes that means calling out randoms, other times it means calling out former teammates in Draymond Green. 

Does any of this truly matter? No. But that's not the point. This is part of the fun of the NBA season. Active players and former teammates taking shots at one another, random beefs, it's all part of the 82 game journey. We've had some media/player beegs, we had a player/fan beef, but this may be our first player/player beef, and something tells me it's not going to end here.