Nevertheless, Green’s aggressiveness starting July 1 clearly worked, even if it wasn’t the main motivating factor in Durant signing with Golden State.
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Those two and Draymond Green play together for Team USA on Tuesday at Oracle Arena.
Team USA faced little to no adversity this game against Team China, coasting to a dominating 107-57 victory.
“It’s going to be a fun year”, Klay Thompson said. If you’re going to get sloppier with the ball, even as you’re winning by more and more each game, the coach isn’t going to be happy.
It was a show of force that didn’t go unnoticed by the team’s new superstar.
Durant said about his transition to the Warriors, “I’ll just stick with what I know and how I do things”. I didnt hear it.. The New York Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony scored 20 points, 16 of them in the third quarter.
As Green noted, this was about Durant coming to Oakland as a Warrior for the first time, and for everybody in the building to fully understand that this is for real now. The crowd roared their approval for Durant as he pumped in the first ten points for Team USA.
That was about the end of the excitement for the night. They roared lustily when he came out of the tunnel for his traditional pre-game warm-up routine.
“It was unbelievable”, Green said.
A moment of silence was held for former Warriors great Nate Thurmond, a Hall of Famer who died earlier this month at age 74 after a short bout with leukemia. The Oracle fans gave equally spirited cheers for Draymond Green and Klay Thompson as Golden State’s incumbent All-Stars took the floor. When the Americans took the court about 15 minutes before tip, the team received raucous cheers from the half-full arena. He then followed it up with another five points to score the first 10 points for his U.S. team.
Team USA’s Facebook page will have a live stream of the NBA TV broadcast. Durant, James Harden and Russell Westbrook represented the USA four years ago at the London Games. That put him one point away from an automatic one-game suspension entering the Finals against Cleveland. Today, due to free agency players are more into working with all-stars than giving a championship to the team that opens its doors for them to join National Basketball Association. “Luckily it went in”, Durant said about the three-pointer. It was good to see him.
The game itself, however, was awful.
China will also have the daunting task of facing the US squad in its opening game of the Rio Olympics on August 6. Just to the left of the placard, Durant autographed a new Warriors home jersey bearing his name. This could entice teams to make a deal and potentially clear up some cap space for next season. For now, though, everyone is still in the honeymoon phase.
“It was incredible”, Durant said.
“It was awesome. The atmosphere was great, energy was great”.
“He really loves the game of basketball, and being one of the best players in the world, he’s easy to play with”.
Now obviously Green’s statistics won’t look similar to this for the Warriors next season, but the number to pay attention to here is the field goal attempts.
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So is everyone else here in the Bay Area.
