One year later, Draymond Green has no regrets

Draymond Green sat along the sidelines this week at Quicken Loans Arena and pointed his right index finger at the spot where it happened -- where everything about the 2016 NBA Finals, and maybe about the next decade of NBA history, changed in a blur of angry limbs.

"That play?" Green said in a chat with ESPN.com, his voice rising. "I don't regret it. Like, I just don't. Some would say maybe I'm wrong for not regretting it. I don't live my life with regrets. I move on. It was never like, 'Oh man, I cost these guys a championship. Now, do I believe in my heart that I did cost us? Yeah, I do. Absolutely. But I still don't regret that play."

That play, of course, was Green swiping at LeBron James' groin as the world's best player stepped over him in an act Green and his team viewed as an intentional, emasculating taunt. The resulting flagrant foul mandated Green be suspended from Game 5 in Oakland. The Warriors were up 3-1 in the best-of-seven series. They never won again.

It is an act with almost no parallel in sports history -- a flash of anger that upended a series on the precipice. To a man, the Warriors are sure they would have clinched the title in Game 5 at home had Green been available. Whether they are right is impossible to know, and not all that important. That they believe it is what matters. If they believe that, then they also believe Green's temper -- his accumulation of needless and violent on-court incidents -- cost them a once-in-a-lifetime chance to repeat as champions in a record-setting 73-win season.

That belief could tear a team apart. It would be natural for teammates to harbor bitterness toward Green. More trivial disputes ripped fissures in other teams that never healed. Green apologized, and the Warriors got past it, quickly. There were no further team meetings. Green did not have to pull any teammate aside and hash things out, he said. They rallied around Green, and accepted his mistake. Their bond grew stronger. Green learned to tread the line, and the Warriors are about to assume the throne again.

It did not have to be that way.

"Initially, we were upset," Shaun Livingston told ESPN.com. "Especially during that moment when we didn't know if he would be suspended. It was like, 'Come on, man. You have to be smarter.'"

The ruling from the league office galvanized them, as did rumblings -- accurate, per sources -- that the Cavaliers lobbied for a two-game suspension. "I think there was empathy for him," Bob Myers, the team's GM, told ESPN.com this week. "The worst thing, the most painful thing you can do to a player, is take him out of a game."

The Warriors list compassion as one of their core values, and they used it to digest what Green had done. "Draymond does so much for us," Bruce Fraser, an assistant coach, told ESPN.com. "You have to live with some of the emotional things he does that hurt you. He was remorseful. He spoke on it. And we have a compassionate group."

"He apologized," Steve Kerr, the team's head coach, told ESPN.com. "S--- happens. I never had any doubt the players would get over it."

Losing Games 6 and 7 helped. They had two more chances, with Green. They lost -- with Green. "I can see people thinking he cost us a championship, but it's not true," Livingston said. "We lost those games."

Owning their collective defeat shifted the focus away from any individual act. "It helped that we credited our opponents," Myers said. "In every arena now, people yell the '3-1 lead' stuff at us, and our response is: 'They beat us. They earned it.' And that is the healthiest response."

Did Green's performance in Game 7 -- 32 points on 11-of-15 shooting, 15 rebounds, 9 assists -- quash any lingering resentment?

"Hell yeah," Kerr said.

Everyone understands Green's foundational importance to the team's identity -- to the very shape they form on the court. There is no impenetrable switching defense without Green, no revolutionary Death Lineup. "We couldn't play the way we do without him," said Ron Adams, the team's defensive guru.

The core players had no choice but to forgive and forget; most of them were under contract for the next season and beyond, and Green wasn't going anywhere. "What are you going to do, trade Draymond because you can't get over it?" Kerr asked. "You have two choices: accept what he does, and that it comes with the occasional outburst, or trade him for a player who isn't as competitive -- a player who won't get kicked out of a game, but also won't get you to Game 7 of the Finals."

Myers was still curious. He held private exit meetings with every player, and he used them in part to see if there was any simmering discontent about the suspension.

"Given human nature, I thought there might be," Myers said. "There wasn't."

"It was important to answer that question for our franchise going forward," Myers told ESPN.com on a podcast in March. "And nobody blamed anyone for anything. How do you get over 3-1? That day got me over it. You can lose with the right people. It makes it tolerable, as much as it sucks to lose. You look around and say, 'You know what? I'll go back and fight this fight with you guys.'"

Green has also gotten better at controlling his temper. He has only two technicals so far in the playoffs -- and zero flagrants. "We don't want to take that emotion away from him," Klay Thompson told ESPN.com "That is what makes him so great -- that dog in him. He has just learned to harness it."

As nice as this all sounds, even Green recognizes things could have turned out differently had Kevin Durant chosen another team. With four stars, including two of the five best players in the league, the Warriors are guaranteed a realistic shot at the title every season. There would be other chances; Green did not blow their last one.

"I look at it as we lost the Finals, but we ended up with KD," Green said. "That's a helluva consolation prize."

Green was already working on that as he left Oracle Arena after that gutting Game 7 loss. Green sat in his car in the parking lot and called Myers, telling him he had to sign Durant. "It's on you," Green told Myers.

Green hung up, stayed in the parking lot, and made another call -- to Durant. "That was my very next call," Green said. Two weeks later, Durant signed a maximum contract that put him in a Golden State uniform for at least one season, with several more seasons likely to come.

"If we win the championship, I'm like 99 percent sure we don't get him," Green said. "There are silver linings to everything."