MILWAUKEE — Kevin Durant knows some of the parallels are there. From a distance, the Brooklyn Nets star forward has watched — like everybody else — the leaked video footage of Draymond Green punching Golden State Warriors teammate Jordan Poole during practice.
The defending champion Warriors' locker room has been hurt by the incident — and the fact that it became public. At the beginning of the 2018-19 season, an incident between then-Warriors teammates Durant and Green had a similar type of impact within the framework of the organization — a verbal disagreement that got more heated at the the end of a game in early November — which carried over into the locker room and threatened to derail the team's camaraderie.
Durant and Green ultimately healed their relationship and the Warriors went about their business, something they're trying to do again almost four years later in the wake of this latest episode.
But as Durant watches the process unfold, he sees a stark difference between then and now. «That's not the same situation,» Durant told ESPN. «Somebody got punched in the face… It's no comparison to that.