“We Believe” Warriors “didn’t f*** with each other” until Stephen Jackson trade | Draymond Green

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Thank God, yo. Lord have mercy. You know, I had Mike Montgomery the year before, and you know, he coached like, you know, like we stupid. He talk like we stupid. He talk to us like we stupid, bro. Like, you know. Give me an example. Like he's basically like, he, you know how a coach like just keeps coaching and telling you everything to do. And then when you like do something, he's like, no, don't do it. I'm like, whoa, homie. Like, you know, like people who coach every play. —and don't understand that, that, dude, this is a performance. You know what I mean? Like, yo, you gotta chill, yo, you gotta chill.

Absolutely.

Like, it got to a point with Mike Montgomery where we had a team meeting and, you know, everybody was just not saying nothing and he was doing all the talking and he was like, you know, 'cause everybody is saying this about you. And I'm like, man, who? "Man, we all right here. Who got a problem? Who got a problem? Who got a problem with who?" Mm-hmm. Like, on the team. And so I had to address it, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

And I had to get people to start speaking up, saying what they had problems and what they had issues with. And when it came out and dudes was speaking up about their problems and their issues, and what they was going to the coach for, it was some petty shit. That's why we suck. And so I had to tell Mike Montgomery, don't talk to me for the rest of the year, bro. Don't say nothing to me. That coach, you, you, you, cool. If you need to translate a message, please send it to them. You know what I mean? Because the signal is disconnected, bro. I have disconnected this line. You're telling me nothing to help me out here, bro. "You ain't telling us nothing to help ourselves out here. You just out here coaching." You know what I mean? Like, "You just coaching, bro. You just coaching. Like, every game you come prepared, you ready to coach. You ready to coach more than you care to see us play well." It's all about—

I hate coaches like that.

Oh my God.

Because it's all about you. You're gonna over-prepare us, which we don't need, like, all of that. And it's ultimately just so you can feel good about yourself.

Bro, I don't remember nothing this man is telling me. That's why I couldn't give you no scenarios. I cut him off, bro. I had to cut him off. When I first got there, when I first got to Golden State, I walked into, you know, you walk into the, you know, dudes on the bosu ball on the little mat part. And I walked in, it's like, you know, practice like probably like 10:15, you know, I guess they started practicing, a little film was gonna start. But like nobody was on the court. Dudes was like still in the training room. One dude was lifting, couple dudes on the court and I'm talking to Chris Mullin. I said, "God damn, what's wrong with y'all?" It's like a damn funeral. Like every day you walk in, it was like a funeral. Like, damn, man, somebody don't wanna be here today. I was like, yo, we can't keep doing this, dog. I can't keep coming to the gym and it ain't cracking.

Mm-hmm.

Like, why are we depressed? Like, we hoop. And it was really because of like how we was practicing. You know what I mean? And like, when I first got traded, I was like back-to-back player of the week. And that was because I was like, "All right, man, look, this is what we gonna do. We gonna run one play. Other than that, we hoopin'." Like, "Man, don't look to the sidelines. Like, we gonna get crackin'." And I think that kind of like started giving us life. We had a great, we finished like 9-2 to finish the season.

Okay.

Something that we believed, but we was way out the playoffs. Then the next year, man, we came back, man. And from the first day he started coaching again, and it was like, "Goddamn, dude, we about to have a whole—" I'm about to have a whole season of this shit. Like you can't perform when you just constantly, someone's trying to like tell you what to do. And like then it's condescending, you know what I mean?

Facts.

And so I just kind of like wrote Mike Montgomery off and just was like, you know, if I see him today, what's up coach? Like, what? He is not, to me, a basketball mind. You know what I mean? And some people get credit for being highly intelligent in our space. You know what I mean?

That's a fact.

Where we have to be of the most intelligence, where our senses gotta be connected. You know what I mean? We gotta make the decisions or make a decision to make a decision. You know what I mean? You getting credit for this, bro? You better knock it off. Yeah. Get out there, shut up. Get out the way. So that was kind of like walking into that corpse. And then when Don Nelson came, it was like, oh man, hell yeah. All I can think about was Run TMC. Okay, we out. He called me, he was like, man, get in shape. You know, this gonna be the type of game. I'm gonna use you in the post, how you play below the free throw line. You know, just kind of use you all over the space. And I was like, "All right, shit, I'm with that." You know what I mean? Like, "Shit, I get to fly up and down the court and play free? I'm with it." And then when the season started, we was good, but we wasn't good. You know what I mean? We just like, we couldn't beat no— We could beat people, we couldn't beat nobody. We couldn't put it together. And we were missing something. And I didn't, you know what I mean? It was like, I didn't— I wasn't there with what I was in New Orleans. You know what I mean? Like, damn near, you know, New Orleans had to trade me and I had to get outta New Orleans. 'Cause it was too fun. It was crackin', it was culture, but I was just there to play basketball. So the culture part was like, that's what was missing. So when they make the trade with Stack and Al, they brought, they kind of like woke everybody up. Like, nah, it's crackin'. We gonna have parties, we going out, we gonna hang out, we gonna go to the mall, we gonna go eat, we gonna have fun. Because before that, nobody on the team fucked with each other. And so that just kind of changed the dynamic to where we was like, all right, man, we like a new, we like the new rap group.

Yeah.

And we just took on that persona everywhere, every city we went to. And then we was like, we gonna party on, the court is our club. "If we win, we going out." You know what I mean? And it's up. And it's up. And what I, you know, it's up. And so that's kind of like how that energy started. 'Cause we was like— Nah, we was winning, going on the "We Believe" run, but them fools go out all the time. But once we started winning, like all this is way before the playoffs. We had won like, you know, you win, well, you don't know that because you've only won championships from before. You win 3 or 4 games in a row as the Warriors, oh, it's sold out in Oracle, it's cracking.

Yeah.

Dog, we was winning like 3 in a row, go out to the club, it's cracking. Oh, we won 6 outta 8, go to the club, it's cracking. The whole We Believe run, we was just out.

Yeah.

And so like the fans was like, damn, like these motherfuckers real. You know what I mean? Like they partying with us. Like we don't know if this shit is gonna last. So everybody was getting it in.

So you embracing it.

Yeah, everybody, it was a big party. It was like a big party. We party, dude.

I heard a story about y'all partying before. I don't know if it's true or not, but I heard the story. One night with Snoop.

Yeah. That was—

That night's real?

That was, I think that was the night we beat Dallas.

Yes.

Yeah, that was the night we beat Dallas. And Snoop, we went to go fuck with Snoop. Snoop was at the Ritz or whatnot. And then we was all fucking with Snoop, of course, you know, Snoop, we smoking. So we smoking and Snoop like, "Hey, cuz, man, let me show you one of these cartoons." Did they tell you this?

Nah, I ain't hear this part.

Hey, bro, Snoop Dogg had a cartoon, like music videos, right? And I think it was to his whole album.

Hey, bro.

Hey, bro, we was sitting there, no bullshit, watching the cartoon, dog, for like 45 minutes. I was like, hey, bro, I gotta go. Hey, it was nothing but music videos, and it was Snoop. It was like a Snoop Dogg video album of cartoons, bro. We was sitting there talking, who baked, and all that was playing was the cartoon. And I was like, damn, is this shit on a loop, bro? Is this the same shit? Song, like, or is this the same 3 songs that I was over there fucked? I was like, yo, I gotta go, yo, I'm done. I can't do this. You got me, Snoop.

He smoked y'all out.

Man, big time.

That's Snoop. Good times.

It was cracking.

What was it like Y'all beat Dallas. And then going into that next round, was it like, man, we done? Like, or did y'all start to really believe like, no, we can keep—

We believe we could beat Utah. It was all predicated on like, it was almost like we, before the series, we start tripping with each other, but not so much like the team. It was just like, when we started talking, dudes was like, "All right, how much you got left, bro?" It was like, "Man, I like, bro, honestly, I ain't got much left." But you know, like we had, we was just like pretty much depleted. And so, you know, like in that next round, it's just like, 4 good minutes of mental focus and plays that can turn the series.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

Yep.

And I think, you know, at the time, like, we didn't get game 1. I missed some free throws. Mike, Mikal Peaches missed some free throws. And then we wound up winning overtime. So we had game 1, we didn't get it. Game 2, we thought we had, we didn't get it. Game 3, we blew 'em out, dunk on 'em. It was like, all right, "We finally over the hump, we back." And then game 4, they snatch it from us. Then we was like, "Goddamn, 3-1 going back to Utah." Niggas was like, "Man, you know, Monta wasn't playing in this series. Stack was guarding Memin Okur. Al wasn't matched up with Boozer." It was just like all our matchups was right for Dallas. All our matchups for Utah was— All the way off, bro.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? And dudes was like, you know, if you ain't got that matchup you want, it's hard to like, matchups—

Try to be effective. People don't understand matchups in the playoffs are everything.

Everything.

You get the wrong matchup, you fucked.

Steven Stag Jack was like, yo, bro, I want, he wanted to guard Karolinko. So he coming off, you know, guarding Dirk, you know, Karolinko, big time defensive player. Stack like, man, put me on Karolinka. You feel what I'm saying? 'Cause Karolinka gonna guard Stack. And then Al and Bulls, like they had a little battle thing, but Coach didn't, like we didn't use it. We didn't play our talent to our advantage in that series. You know what I mean?

Absolutely.

We were trying to like figure it out when guys were convicted. You know what I mean? I'm like, man, I know how to, I need this matchup, you know what I'm saying? And it was just like, man, we was just arguing every game about the matchups or what, you know? And it was just, it wasn't that same, oh, we gonna beat these fools. Mm-hmm.

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