Dissecting the Bleacher Report interview between Draymond Green and Kevin Durant
In mid-August, Draymond Green, the eccentric power forward for the Golden State Warriors, participated in an interview with NBA superstar and former Warriors teammate Kevin Durant, who has since taken his talents to the Brooklyn Nets. The interview has amassed over three million views and has been the subject of many debates among fans since its release.
The fact of the matter is, people love to see athletes banter among themselves because it reveals a side of the players that’s difficult to capture in a professional setting, especially with journalists they have no real personal affiliations with.
In the 24-minute conversation that premiered on Bleacher Report’s YouTube channel with Durant, Green was the journalist-player hybrid and, for the most part, excelled as an interviewer.
Even the best sports journalists couldn’t do what Green was able to in this interview. He does an excellent job of breaking down Durant’s walls by keeping things conversational while clearly articulating and thinking through his questions. Even Durant couldn’t help but acknowledge how excited he was for the discussion in a clip that was inserted in the final seconds of the video.
The interview was also successful because it involved two influential people in the league with a lot of history who are extremely intriguing to basketball fans for dissimilar reasons.
Green’s confident demeanor and outgoing personality had an enormous impact on the Golden State Warriors and their championship success on the hardwood over the last decade. Off the court, Green’s exposure with the media has led many NBA fans to believe he would also prosper in sports broadcasting when he ultimately decides to retire from playing professionally.
Durant, on the other hand, is an enigma to the media and basketball fans alike: someone who has lived and breathed basketball since he could walk, dominated the scoring aspect of the game like no one before him, all while seemingly never letting the crowd in on what he’s thinking.
The interview dives deep into Durant’s past and the duo’s experiences as teammates. The segment that got the most attention by far was when they shared their perspective on their infamous altercation during a regular season game in 2018 — the night many fans concluded was the game Durant unofficially decided he was leaving the Warriors in free agency.
Green and Durant hash things out and speak on how things developed behind closed doors in the interview. Most notably, they come to the consensus that the Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and general manager Bob Myers were largely to blame for not letting the dust between the two settle naturally after the incident.
So that settles the campfire debates about their viral confrontation once and for all, right? Many fans on social media think so, but the truth is that it’s not that simple.
It’s easy to take what the athletes said as fact, especially considering they’re discussing an event that happened nearly three years ago. And maybe their side of the story has some elements of truth to it, but as viewers we are only getting one piece of the puzzle.
As sports journalists, it’s our job to objectively cover stories in a way that minimizes ulterior bias, to do everything in our power to find all the puzzle pieces to a story and put them all together. Frankly, covering an altercation by only referring to one frame of reference could be misleading to the public.
People who were looking for the truth about the altercation need to recognize that this interview was just one flashy piece to a story that will take years to fully understand. It was a fulfilling piece to an intriguing puzzle, but it’s far from over.