Fred VanVleet tells Draymond Green the Raptors were much better than the Warriors without Durant because of depth and matchups. They debate whether Klay Thompson's health in Game 6 could have changed everything, and agree a Game 7 would have been a coin flip.
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What's up everybody? It's Draymond Green. Make sure you subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel below so you don't miss any more of this great content going forward. And speaking of those playoffs, NBA Finals, y'all go on and win the next series. NBA Finals roll around. We're coming into that series without Kevin Durant.
Yep.
And we then go on to play the first 4 games without him. You guys take a 3-1 lead. Then Kevin comes back for game 5. When Kevin comes back for game 5, what's going through y'all head?
I just remember being in the locker room. I remember being in the locker room before game 5 and it was like a little buzz, you know what I mean? Like, was he coming back? It was whispers that he was gonna play. You know what I'm saying? I felt like he was gonna play. Like, if he was close enough to play, we knew he was gonna try it out. And I just remember like the, The conversation being like, "All right, like he coming back. We gonna go at him." Like, you know what I mean? "We gonna see what he got." And he came out and hit them first 4 shots. And I remember like, "Ooh." I was just there being like, "Damn." Like, "Oh my God, this dude is special." And I had a move on him one time and I seen him, he was a little gimpy. And then the next time I think Serge went by him is when he went down. And then, man, it was just, it's just sad as a basketball fan, but. Yeah. We was like, "All right, bro, we can't get no better gift than this. We gotta, if we don't win this, we gonna have to live with this for the rest of our life." And I think that kind of gave us a little extra motivation to get it done.
Absolutely. And that happens in game 5. Game 6, Klay is catching fire. And it's funny because Klay came to me right before that game and he's like, "Dray, I'm gonna have one of them game 6s. Just make sure you give me the ball, Dray. I'm gonna have one of them game 6s, I feel it." Game 6 Klay, Dray. Like he's totally bought into this game 6 Klay thing. Like that everybody's bought, he's totally bought into it. Like game 6, Klay, I'm telling you, Draymond Green, like just gimme the ball. And then he's catching fire. And I don't know, a lot of people say Klay don't get hurt right there. Y'all don't go on to win that NBA championship. I don't know if how true that is. How do you feel about that? I mean, I know what I think, but I do wanna hear your thoughts on it.
I don't agree with that, but at the same time I could see that argument. You know what I'm saying? I could see that argument. He like, him in those Game 6s, he got a super catalog of like those crazy games where it's hard to beat him. I felt like we were a much better team than y'all without Kevin because, you know, we had the depth and there was just certain matchups that we could pick on. And like some of the guys that y'all was playing in those moments wasn't like what we was used to seeing from the Warriors dynasty. Like y'all was bringing some of those guys up to speed, whether it was like Alphonso McKinney, Quinn Cook, Boogie, like those was new guys to what y'all was doing. So we had specific things that we was hunting for in some of those situations. But yeah, who knows? Nobody will ever know. Y'all can argue that for the rest of y'all life.
You know, Jama came over to our staff. I always talk junk to him about it. Like, man, if we ain't get hurt. But the reality is this. If we win that Game 6, which I, what I do believe is if Klay doesn't get hurt, we do win that Game 6.
Right.
I don't think there's no questions asked. We win the Game 6. But you go to Game 7 and it's just a coin flip. Like— Yeah, it's a coin flip. You just kind of know that from the history of Game 7s. You get to Game 7, it's a coin flip. So the reality is I don't necessarily think, oh man, we won Game 6, we was for sure winning the championship. —because Game 7, I don't care what happened the rest of the series, Game 7, you flipped a coin and whatever happens, happens.
Yeah, Game 7, anything could happen. I just felt like at the time we was winning most of the quarters. Game 5, I felt like we should've won and we was up. Kawhi started going crazy and then y'all made a comeback late. So, you know, we gonna feel this way, y'all gonna feel that way, it is what it is.
