Despite it being less than a year since he battled against the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals, Draymond Green is rooting for them this time around.
On the latest episode of his podcast for The Volume, the Golden State Warriors star Green revealed that he is pulling for the Celtics to defeat the Miami Heat. The reason is because Green believes that the Heat blowing a 3-0 lead would finally take some attention off the Warriors for a blowing a 3-1 lead to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals.
“[The Celtics becoming] the first team to come back from a 3-0 deficit?” said Green. “We would love to see it, wouldn’t we? Maybe I won’t have to hear about 3-1 anymore if this team comes back from 3-0.
“You could throw the 3-1 in the dirt,” Green added. “I’m sick of it. It would be a much better story for me personally. It would be a much better story.”
Here is the full clip.
Draymond hoping for Celtics in 7? 😅 pic.twitter.com/eSvSxCGQsn
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 26, 2023
Of course, the 2016 Warriors won’t be off the hook no matter what happens in this Celtics-Heat series. While a 3-0 collapse would absolutely be historic, the Heat are ultimately an overachieving and extremely injured No. 8 seed whom no one expected to even be competitive with the No. 2 seed Celtics, much less take the first three games from them.
The Warriors’ story is a little bit different though. In 2016, they were the greatest regular season team in NBA history (with a record 73 wins) and jumped out to a 3-1 NBA Finals lead that no team had ever blown before. But their subsequent meltdown was almost entirely self-inflicted (outside of a mid-series injury to center Andrew Bogut). Green got himself suspended for Game 5 of the Finals for a nut shot on LeBron James, the Warriors failed to keep their focus on either end of the court, and they ultimately fumbled away the championship to an inferior Cavaliers team. That is much worse than anything that the Cinderella Heat could do at this point.
Golden State did do enough in subsequent years to wash away the stench of that blown 3-1 lead with NBA title victories in three of the next six seasons. But unfortunately for Green, those 3-1 jokes are never truly going away.
