Draymond Green Is on a $27.7 Million Expiring Deal and Says He Will Not Retire. The Warriors Should Listen.
Draymond Green told CNBC Sport’s Alex Sherman what he wants, and then he told him the truth about it, which is more than most players on expiring contracts manage.
“I would love to retire a Golden State Warrior,” Green said in the interview, published Tuesday. “However, I’m also not Steph Curry, right? So I don’t have every luxury that Steph Curry has, and that’s okay.”
Then the part that matters. “I would love to play basketball next year. If that’s not here, I’m not going to retire.”
He Is Describing His Own Contract Accurately
Green is on a one-year, $27.7 million deal he signed in July. There is no player option and no team option on it. He becomes an unrestricted free agent in the 2027 offseason, and he becomes trade-eligible on December 15 under the rule covering newly signed free agents.
He also gave up the one thing that would have protected him. ESPN’s Anthony Slater reported in July that Green waived the implicit no-trade clause he was entitled to and took a 15 percent trade kicker instead. Slater also reported that the Warriors do not plan to move him. Both of those can be true in October and only one of them has to be true in February.
The route to this contract is the part nobody talks about. Green declined a $27.7 million player option in June, which Shams Charania reported gave Golden State flexibility to chase LeBron James in free agency and Anthony Davis in a trade. Neither happened. LeBron signed in Philadelphia, Davis stayed in Washington, and Green re-signed for the exact number he had walked away from. Slater reported the Warriors had a longer deal ready if the LeBron pursuit had worked.
The Roster Around Him Is Not Built for Patience
Curry is 38 and signed through 2028-29 on a two-year, $116 million extension. That is the luxury Green was talking about.
Jimmy Butler has not played since tearing his right ACL in January and is targeting a return in January or February. Kristaps Porzingis, acquired for Jonathan Kuminga and Buddy Hield, is out with a health issue the team will not describe. General manager Mike Dunleavy’s only public comment was that it is “a health thing that we can’t really comment on.”
Golden State opened Wednesday by losing 127-105 at the Lakers. Memphis comes in Friday.
Green Is 36 and This Is His 15th Season
He was the 35th pick in 2012 and he has never played for another team. Four rings in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022, Defensive Player of the Year in 2017, four All-Star selections and nine All-Defensive teams. In 2023 he told Stephen A. Smith he expected to be finished around the end of his 15th season, which is this one, and he has now walked that back.
Nobody at the Warriors Has Answered Him
Steve Kerr has not responded to the CNBC comments. Neither has Dunleavy. There is no reporting that Golden State is shopping Green, and the trade packages circulating online are columnist inventions, labeled as such by the columnists who wrote them.
What exists is the shape of the thing. A $27.7 million expiring contract on a 36-year-old defensive specialist, attached to a team that got blown out in its opener and is missing two of its best players, becomes available for trade on December 15. Green did that math out loud on a business news network a day before the season started.
So take him at his word on the part he actually said, which is that he keeps playing somewhere. He is not asking out and he is not unhappy. He said he would hold no ill feelings if the Warriors moved on, and a 36-year-old on a one-year deal who says that is telling you he has read the room correctly. The Warriors should respect it enough to stop pretending an expiring contract means something it does not.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
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