Draymond Green denies beef between Warriors & Grizzlies: “Is it a rivalry? No way, Absolutely not”
The Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies have had some interesting games the past few seasons, causing fans to believe that there's a rivalry between the teams.
Grizzlies guard Ja Morant has also made it seem like the teams are rivals, but the Warriors haven't necessarily thought of it the same way. Although Warriors forward Draymond Green has certainly come out and said some interesting things about the Grizzlies, he doesn't believe the teams have a rivalry for a few reasons.
Morant somewhat cleaned up that notion as he said a few months ago on "NBA Today" that the Warriors and Grizzlies aren't a rivalry yet. However, he did note that everybody in the NBA wants to beat Golden State because of all of the success that the Warriors have found throughout the past few years.
"Honestly, I wouldn't say it's a rivalry, but I feel like everybody in the league is pretty much after Golden State," Morant said.
"Honestly I wouldn't say it's a rivalry, but I feel like everybody in the league is pretty much after Golden state."
— @JaMorant
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Warriors' rivalry with Grizzlies
Draymond Green spoke a bit in a recent interview about the rivalry that the Memphis Grizzlies and Golden State Warriors have. What he said was interesting considering that many around the NBA world believed the teams had a tight hate for each other.
However, Draymond Green gave some backlash to Memphis and said that they can't be rivals if they haven't beaten Golden State when it matters most.
“Is it a rivalry? No way. Absolutely not,” Green said on the first episode of “Unfiltered with Complex Sports,” which was released Thursday. “You know what that reminds me of? That reminds me of when they were trying to make it out that the Warriors and the (LA) Clippers were a rivalry back in 2014, ’15 and ’16. That was never a rivalry.
“And by the way, at one point in that, we were the up-and-coming young fellas. Even then, that wasn’t a rivalry. Nobody had won anything! So, how was it a rivalry? And (the Grizzlies) haven’t won anything, so it’s impossible for that to be a rivalry. Who was a rivalry was us and the (Cleveland Cavaliers). That was a rivalry.
"You don’t just get ‘rivalry’ because you played a good regular season game or two. Let’s not lessen the standards of rivalries.”
It's interesting to hear Draymond Green say this, and it's tough to argue against what he's saying. Considering that Memphis has not beaten the Golden State Warriors when it matters most, there's not necessarily much of a rivalry in that sense.
Memphis has played the Warriors tough in some regular season games, but once it's playoff time, they simply couldn't beat the Warriors.
This doesn't mean that a rivalry can't develop throughout the next few years, but at the moment, it doesn't seem likely to happen during the regular season. It's all going to depend on what they are able to do in the playoffs, and if they're able to do that, then maybe we will see a rivalry soon.