One of the moments that sparked Cleveland’s championship run last postseason happened in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. During the waning moments of a 108-97 Warriors win to make the series 3-1, LeBron James and Draymond Green got tangled up and the latter went to the ground. LeBron stepped over Green, who responded by striking LeBron in the groin.
Green ended up picking up a flagrant foul in the incident and getting suspended for Game 5, which the Cavaliers won. He returned for Game 6 in Cleveland, but the Cavs won that game, too. Then in Game 7, Cleveland won and secured a championship in Oracle Arena despite Green having the game of his life.
One year later and Green has an opportunity for revenge – the Warriors currently have a 1-0 lead in the 2017 Finals. But Golden State’s do-everything forward is still hung up on what happened last summer. In a segment for E:60, Green looked back on that moment and explained why he believes he is to blame for the Warriors’ unraveling.
“If I played, we win, of course,” Green told ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi. “So I do feel it’s my fault that we lost.”
When Rinaldi followed up and asked Green point blank about it being his fault, Green responded, “Absolutely my fault, but I don’t feel wrong for what I did at all.”
Green has expressed in the past that he thought the Warriors would have gotten a ring if he played in Game 5, but even when he was asked about it in June of 2016, he left the door open to some doubt. In this E:60 clip, he is saying that there’s no chance the Warriors lose that game.
Of course there’s no way to account for things like LeBron’s insane finish to last year’s Finals or anything else that propelled the Cavaliers to the Finals. Sure, it would have helped a ton of Green played in Game 5 when the Warriors were at home and had all the momentum in the series, but all that matters now is the 2017 Finals. And besides, if Golden State gets a ring this year, odds are Green will get over what happened the last time the team was in the Finals.
