During an extensive interview on ESPN's First Take, Kevin Durant gave a detailed explanation of why he decided to leave the Golden State Warriors.

"I just felt like I needed a switch," said Durant. "I felt like a lot of stuff in Golden State had reared its head. It was just going to be the end no matter what, especially for that group. Shaun Livingston was retiring. Andre Iguodala was getting older. Our contracts were going to stifle the team and put us in a hole to get other players. It was just time to kind of separate."

Durant also spoke about how his confrontation with Draymond Green made his pending free agency a larger story than he thought it needed to be throughout the season.

Durant refuted the notion that he joined the Brooklyn Nets to try to win in a situation that is more difficult than the one he joined with the Warriors in 2016.

Kevin Durant admitted the way Draymond Green confronted him early in the 18-19 season during and after a game at the Los Angeles Clippers impacted his free agency decision.

Stephen A. Smith asked him about that situation during an appearance on ESPN's First Take

"I wish that wouldn't have happened," replied Durant. "I feel like that was a situation that could have definitely been avoided. It really came out of nowhere. For us, everybody was just looking for something to tear us down with and I think they used that. It just brought in the firestorm with free agency. Every day was about my free agency. Everyday was about my disposition as a player. What I looked like on the bench. What I looked like during the game. It opened up a lot of nonsense I think could have been avoided.

"Me and Draymond talked about it."

Smith then asked Durant about Green admitting he refused to apologize until he saw his former teammate hurt.

"Draymond knew he was out of line. As men, we talked about it. Everybody around tried to get us to mend it fast because the season (was going on). He had his process on how he wanted to handle things and I respected that and I have my process and we eventually handled it."

Smith then asked for a definitive answer from Durant on whether that confrontation influenced his decision to sign with the Brooklyn Nets.

"A little bit, yeah, for sure," said Durant. "Your teammate talk to you that way, you think about it a bit."

The Golden State Warriors will be without Stephen Curry for several weeks with a broken hand, joining Klay Thompson on the sidelines and leaving Draymond Green and D'Angelo Russell to try to scavenge wins that were already tough to come by.

“I’m just telling you that the bottom line is I’m not negative and I’m not going to get negative,” Joe Lacob told The Athletic outside the Warriors locker room late Wednesday. “I’m an optimist and we’re building something. You’re always looking short term and you’re looking intermediate term and you’re looking long term.

“And I think we’ve got a lot of good young players in place. Potentially, there’s a silver lining in all of this, who knows? And I’m very optimistic about our future. Very optimistic about our future. I think we’re going to be there at some point. Can’t say when. We’ve obviously got a lot of injuries now, but we’re going to be there.”

The Warriors will retain their first round pick if it remains in the top-20.

Lacob isn't ready to concede the 19-20 season for the Warriors.

“I don’t look at it that way,” Lacob said. “I look at it (as) we have a job to do, Bob (Myers) does, all of us, to build something for the long term. And sometimes you can’t just think what’s in front of you the next week. You have to think about the next months and even year or two. Have to.

“That’s what we have done. I think that we’re going to be good over the long run.”

Steph Curry suffered a broken left hand against the Phoenix Suns, confirmed the Golden State Warriors.

Ramona Shelburne of ESPN reported that Curry fractured the second metacarpal, which represents the bone below the index finger.

Bob Myers said following the game that Curry will undergo a CT scan and an MRI to see if he needs surgery and determine a recovery schedule.  

Curry left the game after falling on his hand in the third quarter.

Curry was averaging 24 points, 6.7 assists, and 5 rebounds through three games in the season.

Kevin Durant wants to win a title with the Brooklyn Nets, but he's realistic that the situation will be more challenging than it was when he joined the Golden State Warriors in 2016.

"Obviously leaving Golden State, I'm not expecting anything better than that," said Durant. "I see this situation as, 'All right, I'm coming to a young organization that has championship aspirations but doesn't quite know what that feels like.'"

Durant won a pair of Finals MVPs while with the Warriors, but he left the Warriors in search of a new challenge.

"I felt they kind of ground it out from the bottom, and I liked that," Durant said of the Nets.

Kyrie Irving became friends with Kevin Durant and DeAndre Jordan during the 2016 Olympics. Irving had just won a title with the Cleveland Cavaliers while Durant was coming off his decision to join the Golden State Warriors.

The three had endless conversations about basketball, including how LeBron James had orchestrated his own "friend group" with the Miami Heat with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

On one of the final nights they had together during their Olympic run, Irving, Durant and Jordan toasted.

"Hey, this would be cool to do for real" Jordan recalls Irving saying.

"I asked him, 'What you mean by that?'" Jordan says, "and Ky said, 'Let's all get on the same team and play together.'"

Durant went on to win titles in 2017 and 2018. Irving requested a trade in 2017 from the Cavaliers and ended up on the Boston Celtics. Jordan left the Los Angeles Clippers for the Dallas Mavericks and eventually the New York Knicks in 18-19.

"The brotherhood was real," Irving says, "but circumstances kept us apart."

"There were times when you had to wonder, 'Is this ever going to really happen?"' Jordan says.

All three players became free agents in 2019.

"We all agreed," Jordan says, "'We gotta do this.'"

Steve Kerr was asked whether he would like to see Stephen Curry shoot more three-pointers as the Golden State Warriors try to figure out how to play without Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant.

"I don't know that it's that simple," Kerr said. "We could turn him into James Harden and give him the ball every play. That's really hard to do and you have to build a team for that. Houston has put five shooters on the floor for years now with Harden to give him that space. We don't have that kind of personnel, so there's not the same spacing. And that kind of basketball wears you out, too. Especially for a guy who's 180 pounds like Steph is. So I don't think the answer is just to run a million high screens. We don't really have the personnel for that. And I don't think it makes a ton of sense from Steph's standpoint."

Kerr was asked the question before the Warriors defeated the New Orleans Pelicans by a final score of 134-123. Curry had 26 points while D'Angelo Russell added 24.

The Golden State Warriors don't see the decision Kevin Durant made to leave the franchise to sign with the Brooklyn Nets as a betrayal. The Warriors have gone out of their way to commemorate his three seasons with the Warriors and Joe Lacob has already announced the team will retire his No. 35.

"I think the organization did a great job of saying, 'Yes, you were a part of this,'" Bob Myers said. "He's in all these pictures. The overall feeling is positive from his side, positive from our side. I don't sense any bitterness. It's like, 'You're doing this, we're doing our thing.'"

After Durant decided to sign with the Nets, he and Myers exchanged pleasantries. 

There has been speculation in the media over how the Warriors handled Durant's calf injury that eventually became an Achilles tear when he returned for Game 5 of The Finals. There also have been questions over how Durant wasn't as close to some of his teammates the way he had hoped.

Joe Lacob never apologized for his comment saying the Golden State Warriors were "light-years ahead" of the competition. With the Warriors moving into Chase Center and struggling to start the season, it now appears to some as though the franchise has become just another NBA team again.

"When we won the championship, I told Bob right afterwards, 'We've got to get better,'" Lacob explained. "I always say that. That's how you keep going. People think I'm being egotistical or arrogant. I'm not. I'm really being honest.

"You have to continue to strive as an organization, both on the basketball side and the business side, to continually improve, because your competition is certainly trying to do the same thing.

"The rest of the league is going to catch us at some point."

Kevon Looney will miss at least the next two Golden State Warriors games with what the team is describing as a neuropathic condition.

Looney is also set to see a group of specialists to figure out his nerve condition.

The Warriors believe that his condition is related to a hamstring injury that kept him out of training camp.

"It's not really his hamstring. It's kind of a neuropathic condition that he's had for a couple years. It's something he's been able to play through, but in this particular case, the condition is affecting his hamstring. His hamstring is sound, the MRI is clean, but it makes it trickier actually that it's a neuropathic condition," said Steve Kerr.