As Much As It Pains Me To Agree With Draymond Green, Damian Lillard Probably Shouldn't Be Talking About The Warriors

Damian Lillard

“I can only imagine what it would be like having him iso’ing on one side, and C.J. in a corner, and me on the opposite wing and Nurk (Jusuf Nurkic)…I can only imagine how hard it would be to guard us when it’s already hard to guard us.
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“We can compete with anybody in the West, but I think when you get to those teams like Golden State, if we happen to run into them in a playoff situation now—we getting in the paint, and if they want to help off someone like Melo…good luck.”

Draymond Green

□□□□□ give it a break @damianlillard

A post shared by Draymond Green (@money23green) on Jul 20, 2017 at 4:49pm PDT

I actually don't even think that's enough crying faces. I'm not the biggest Draymond Green enthusiast, but he easily could have doubled up on the emojis and I still wouldn't have thought it was overkill considering the absurdity of the statement in question. 

Now, I certainly don't want the rest of the NBA to kneel at the Warriors' feet (though they'll inevitably be forced to do so anyway), so it's nice to see that there are still players out there who are far too confident in their team's ability to compete. However, maybe - just maybe - Damian Lillard should wait until a player is actually on his roster before touting how dangerous of a fit he will be in the offense. By all accounts, Carmelo Anthony wants no part of Portland, so it's a littttttle bit premature to be penciling his 20+ PPG into the Trail Blazers lineup.

I'm not a big "keep our name out of your mouth" guy and Golden State is certainly the benchmark by which all other teams should be fruitlessly measuring themselves. That said, it's probably wise for the leader of a team that got casually swept off the floor while Kevin Durant spent two of those games nodding in approval from the sidelines to not jump to some glorified conclusion before busting out the tape measure.

Even the Trail Blazers almost inconceivable addition of Melo wouldn't subtract from the Warriors championship odds, so using his extremely unlikely presence as the proverbial soapbox to stand on before trying to stand back-to-back with the the most statistically dominant team of all time is worth all the hysterical tears. Damian Lillard should be pushing his organization to add another All Star caliber player, but asking Draymond Green to bust out his lucky rabbit's foot in the process? Well, that just seems a tad excessive for an 8 seed whose leader is bragging about a team that's closer to coming to fruition on NBA2K.