SAN FRANCISCO — When the Warriors selected Draymond Green in the 2012 NBA Draft, it was hard to imagine that he and Stephen Curry would still be playing together 10 seasons later. Green at first didn’t think they’d ever become friends. “Not at all,” Green told FOX Sports, flashing a wide grin. “We were just such polar opposites.” Curry was baby-faced and understated, while Green was hot-tempered and loud. Curry, the son of an NBA player, grew up in an affluent neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, while Green was raised below the poverty line by a single mother for much of his youth in Saginaw, Michigan. Curry was offensive-minded, while Green was a grind-it-out defender. But it didn’t take long for them to realize that their differences were wildly complementary. “If there were two me’s, it might not be as loud in the locker room as it needs to be at times,” said Curry, now in his 13th season with Golden State. “And if there were two of him, nobody would know when to shut up. It’s the perfect balance.” It’s rare for superstars to stay together for a decade without fracturing, especially under the intense microscope of five straight NBA Finals appearances and three championships. Usually, egos collide, and the situation becomes untenable. But Curry and Green have survived every challenge. Together, along with Klay Thompson, they’re the longest tenured trio in the NBA. Even when they missed the playoffs the past two seasons while Thompson was sidelined with ACL and Achilles injuries, Curry and Green leaned on each other instead of pointing fingers. They’d constantly talk on airplanes, in corners of gyms and in the locker room about how to turn things around. The conversation had different iterations but the same theme. “We can’t f—ing keep doing this,” Green told FOX Sports. “This ain’t it, keep getting our ass kicked, this ain’t it. So there was this mutual understanding of want and will to keep working and do whatever we needed to do to right the ship.” Those talks have more than paid off. At 23-5, the Warriors are tied with Phoenix for the best record in the league ahead of the much-anticipated return of Thompson in the next few weeks. At age 33, Curry is playing at an MVP level and on Tuesday broke the NBA all-time record for made 3-pointers. Meanwhile, Green is the front-runner for the Defensive Player of the Year award. They both attribute the team’s turnaround to the same thing: their deep love and appreciation for each other. “If you take a startup company, and you have a few co-founders, more often than not, they either hate each other or love each other,” Green told FOX Sports. “It’s never, ‘Oh, they’re cool. They’re OK.’ It’s either they’re the f—ing best, and they absolutely love each other, or they absolutely hate each other, and you don’t mention one around the other person. For us, it’s obviously love. We love each other.” Their relationship developed slowly. Green likened it to peeling an onion. The more he learned about Curry, the more he started trusting him. For Green, the defining moment in their friendship came in November 2018, after he unleashed a verbal tirade at then-teammate Kevin Durant during a game in Los Angeles against the Clippers. Durant barked at Green for not passing him the ball for a potential game-winning shot, and Green responded by cursing at Durant and saying he was going to leave in free agency, so he didn’t matter. Cameras caught much of the ugly exchange, which continued in the locker room after the game. Green was suspended for one game without pay by the Warriors, and many questioned whether this incident would blow up their season. When the team returned to Oakland, Curry, who had remained in the Bay Area to rehabilitate a strained groin, met Green at his house. They talked for two hours. Curry stayed so long that he missed his pregame nap and had to go straight to the arena. “No need to get into all of the details of the conversation,” Green said. “But it was just that, like, at the end of the day, ‘Were you wrong? I thought you could’ve handled it better.’ OK. As someone who I respect and love, I own that. ‘I thought you could’ve handled it better. But understand that no matter what, we’re still with you.’ I think that, for me, that’s big.” It was a tense time for Green. He was waiting to hear if the Warriors were going to suspend him, a move some thought would signal that the team’s brass was taking Durant’s side. Having Curry show up at his house really meant something to Green. Curry eventually had a conversation with Durant as well and is widely credited for helping the team get past the incident. “Everyone’s going to have their opinion on something, and that’s totally fine,” Green said. “But when it all boils down to: Do I have your back, or do I not? That’s the most important thing. Just to know I’m going to come sit here with you for two hours, and we’re going to talk through this, figure out what happens next. I’m going to tell you how I feel, you tell me how you feel, and we’ll go from there. “But to ultimately know, regardless, ‘We’ve got your back, and we’re with you no matter what.’ I think that, for me, that was huge in that moment because you don’t know. You can believe what you want. But the only way you know is to get that from someone. And he’s never wavered from that. Not for one second.” Curry said his decision to go to Green’s house was a no-brainer. He called it “the right thing to do.” The entire sports world was talking about this incident, and he knew his friend was distraught. Amid the turmoil, Curry wanted to be by Green’s side. “This wasn’t going to define our year,” Curry told FOX Sports. “It wasn’t going to define him. He knew I had his back. He knew he could’ve done things better. We all probably could’ve done things better. Hindsight is 20-20. But it’s kinda like family: When you have a blow up, you try to resolve it as fast as possible and don’t let stuff fester.” Similarly for Curry, there have been several watershed moments throughout their friendship that stand out to him. There was the time Curry’s wife, Ayesha, threw him a surprise 30th birthday party, and Green pulled him aside for a moment alone. In a quiet space away from the large crowd and blaring music, Green handed Curry a package. It contained five select wines and a note in which Green detailed how much he respects Curry as a man, husband and father. It deeply touched Curry. Until that moment, it was well-established how much they meant to each other on the court. And it was obvious that their relationship extended beyond the game, but having that sentiment concretely expressed felt different. “He shared some words on that front that we hadn’t before,” Curry told FOX Sports. “Winning and basketball was amazing, and you wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. But [the note was about] the influence of how we live our lives and what’s important off the court and us growing into family men kinda on the same timeline. That’s the stuff we’ll talk about forever. That means a lot.” For more on how Curry and Green have made their decade-long relationship work, get the full story on FOX Sports. |
