Draymond Green Says The Cavs Knew They ‘Didn’t Stand A F*cking Chance’ In The 2017 Finals


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Draymond Green has never been shy when it comes to speaking his mind publicly, or actively antagonizing rivals and opponents. The Warriors’ center and reigning Defensive Player of the Year has the hardware and the rings to back up all the talking he does on and off the court.

For the past few years, Green and the Warriors’ chief rival has been the Cleveland Cavaliers. The two teams split the 2015 and 2016 Finals, with the latter being a stunning series defeat for the Warriors that led Green to lead the push for Kevin Durant to come to Oakland. In 2017, Golden State got its revenge in a dominant five game win.

Green, however, is still mad that the Warriors didn’t finish off their quest for a perfect playoff run with a Finals sweep, as he told GQ‘s Clay Skipper in the weeks following their victory.

As Green so eloquently put it, the Cavaliers “didn’t stand a f*cking chance” against Golden State in that Finals (and most people would agree with him.

“They didn’t stand a f*cking chance,” he says of the Cavs, who lost in five games. “It pissed me off we didn’t sweep them, though.”

The Game 4 victory by Cleveland gave them a shimmer of hope, as they hit an NBA record 24 three pointers to win, doing what some thought may be impossible: out-shooting the Warriors. Green, Golden State’s best defensive presence, remembers laughing about people wondering if the Cavs could make another comeback after that game, when it was so clear to him (and he insists it was to the Cavs too) that they had no shot.

“That’d never been done!” Green exclaims. “They don’t come out and hit twenty-four threes and they’re swept. And that’s the second best team in the world. It’s pretty fucking sick to see how everybody is just in a fucking panic about what to do. You sit back and think, like, these motherfuckers, they know. That’s the fun part about it: They know they don’t stand a chance.”

Green’s confidence was warranted, as the Warriors went on to thump the Cavs again in Game 5 en route to a championship. Now, they’re championship favorites again and, if they play as they did last year, most teams will go into a seven-game series against them with similar doubts as to their abilities to take down the juggernaut in Oakland.

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