Taking a look at Draymond Green tweets from four or five years ago, one might think he holds a very personal grudge and hatred towards LeBron James, a player he’s going to be spending a lot of time with in the NBA Finals.
Twitter “hate” doesn’t actually mean real hate. Kendrick Perkins seems quite happy being on team LeBron after plenty of years and words against him. DeShawn Stevenson was in the same situation for a lot of years but once he had a chance to team up with James (which didn’t happen eventually) he was quite happy to do it.
Now Green isn’t exactly going to team up with James anytime soon (who knows actually, because he’s hitting free agency) but these tweets did come from before James won his two NBA titles, which made a lot of people quit their rhetoric about James being a loser or not clutch. But Green isn’t exactly the league’s most soft spoken or gentle player. Some guys like him feed on that feeling to get better on the floor.
In any case, we’re going to see what all that turns into during the finals. Not just because they’re going to be sharing a court together, but because Green is probably going to be the one guarding James most of the time, hoping he can perform as well as Kawhi Leonard did last year.
As for James and “hate” directed at him? He’s been through this dozens of times with players disrespecting him, and hundreds of times with the fans. He doesn’t have to prove anything anymore to anyone, although doing something with the Cavaliers, a team that’s quite the underdog in the days leading up to their finals series with the Warriors, might be his biggest achievement yet.