For years, Iman Shumpert knew the Golden State Warriors from the wrong side of the fight. He faced them on the game’s biggest stage as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers, including the 2015, 2016 and 2017 NBA Finals, when Golden State and Cleveland defined an era through repeated championship clashes.
That history is what gives his latest comments on Draymond Green and the Warriors unusual weight: they did not come from an admirer at a distance, but from someone who spent years trying to beat them.
Shumpert’s praise was striking precisely because it came wrapped in rivalry.
“But when we talk about Draymond, you just made me get sentimental as well because I feel like I have for the integrity of the game, I have been forced to hate them on the other side. Going to plenty of battles with them. But the natural basketball competitor in me hates the other side. And they have been giving us performance after performance, series after series. They’ve always held high in standards of the integrity of the game. I know Draymond gets a lot of slack for it and Draymond, I know you do, but we do appreciate what you do on a day-to-day. I’m dead serious. It’s great to see you stick up for other players around the league, talk on different subjects. I think he’s done a great job.”
Iman Shumpert on Draymond Green and the Warriors:
“But when we talk about Draymond, you just made me get sentimental as well because I feel like I have for the integrity of the game, I have been forced to hate them on the other side. Going to plenty of battles with them. But the… pic.twitter.com/dD6kQrJ3F1
— NBA Courtside (@NBA__Courtside) April 16, 2026
This touches both sides of Green’s public image. He has long drawn criticism for technical fouls, confrontations and the volatility that often trails him, but he has also become one of the league’s most vocal player voices, willing to speak on issues beyond the box score. Shumpert’s point was not that Green is universally beloved. It was that even opponents who spent years resenting the Warriors’ dominance can still recognize the seriousness with which Golden State approached winning and the larger role Green has carved out for himself around the league.
That makes the remark feel more meaningful than ordinary player-to-player praise. Shumpert is effectively saying that respect sometimes arrives through resistance. The Warriors were hated because they kept winning, because they kept showing up in May and June, because they kept forcing everybody else to measure themselves against a higher bar. In that sense, his tribute was not just about Green. It was about the standard the Warriors represented at their peak, and about the uncomfortable truth that the teams you respect most are often the ones you most enjoyed trying to bring down.
