Kevin Durant: Draymond Green Incident Won’t Impact Free Agency

Kevin Durant says his highly-publicized verbal spat with Draymond Green won’t be a factor once he becomes a free agent next summer.

KD acknowledges that his teammate has a well-known tendency to say “crazy sh*t,” and says the spat is now water under the bridge.

Green approached Durant following the incident, and the two All-Stars agreed to mend fences and move forward.

Per Yahoo Sports:

“Nah, [it won’t factor],” Durant told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday. “Because at the end of the day, I’m just a ballplayer that’s just trying to be in a great environment to play basketball and groom my skills every day. And I want to compete on a level that once the game starts, I’m just totally comfortable with my surroundings, with just going out there and being me.”

Durant holds a player option for the 2019-20 season that he’s expected to decline so he can enter free agency next summer, and there was concern the spat could result in the back-to-back Finals MVP leaving the franchise in July. But Durant emphasized there’s no issue with Green and that he’s ready to put everything in the past.

“I was upset, but I know that I can’t hold on to something like this,” Durant told Yahoo Sports. “I know that I’ve got to make a choice with myself, like how long are you going to be upset about this to the point where you’re going to let it affect what you do on the floor or how you approach the game? Once it gets there now, I got to make a grown-man decision and tell myself, ‘Look, man, no matter what, you still got to come to work every single day. It’s going to work out. It’s going to figure itself out.’ And I think everyone’s been handling it the best way they could and we’re just trying to move forward with it.”

In the end, Durant said the situation could become a galvanizing force that could bring the team closer.

“When you go through some adversity in your personal relationships and you kind of lay everything out on the table with that human, that person, you start to just really get an understanding for everything,” Durant told Yahoo Sports. “… I feel like we’ll all do that at some point. Not just me and Draymond, but I feel like just being with these guys for so long that you start to get comfortable.”

Related
Unnamed Player: There’s ‘No Way’ Durant Is Re-Signing After Draymond Feud