Realistically, there probably is not a whole lot of money on the open market for Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green. There’s no question he has value within the organization, but at the end of a season in which he is averaging 8.6 points with 5.5 rebounds and 5.5 assists, on just 41.9% shooting from the field and 32.9% from the 3-point line, it’s become increasingly clear that Green has value to Golden State, but not necessarily elsewhere.
That’s what makes his offseason choice this summer especially interesting. Green has a player option at the end of the four-year, $100 million contract he signed in 2023, and if he were to simply opt in and play out that final year, he’d be getting paid a lot more than he is worth. But he wants to finish his career with Stephen Curry and the Warriors, and the best way for him to do that would be to opt out of the final year, at $28 million, and agree to a three-year-ish contract to stay put.
He would have to take less money in Year 1 because, again, he is not going to get $28 million per year on the market. But the Warriors and Green could see something in the range of three years and $6o million as a reasonable compromise.
Draymond Green ‘Discussed’ a New Contract
Green, as he would acknowledge, probably shouldn’t get too deep into publicly discussing his future, but he pretty much did exactly that in a recent story in the San Francisco Standard. His probable course of action, he said, is to opt out of the remaining Warriors deal.
He told the site’s Tim Kawakami that he and his agent, Rich Paul of Klutch Sports, have had some preliminary conversations about the future.
“Rich and I discussed it a couple months ago briefly,” Green said. “We haven’t talked much about it because we don’t deal with those things until the offseason. But I think in an ideal world, and again, this is me talking without me talking to my representation so Rich will probably kill me. But in an ideal world, I think the best path would be to decline and extend. If I had it my way, that would be the best path forward.”
Kawakami added, “He and his agent Rich Paul are picturing a possible new deal — declining Draymond’s player-option for $27.7 million next season and extending for a few more years, presumably at a lower annual salary.”
Warriors Could Have Some Trade Choices
One reality the Warriors will need to face this offseason, as they try to figure out how to give Curry one last hurrah before his NBA career winds down in the coming years, is that if the team wants to make a major trade this summer, they’re going to need a major contract to satisfy the NBA rules on matching contracts in trades.
That’s relevant to Green because, with Kristaps Porzingis hitting free agency this summer, the only big matching contracts the team has to make a run at a trade for, say, Giannis Antetokounmpo or Karl-Anthony Towns would be Curry, Green or injured star Jimmy Butler.
It’s not going to be Curry, obviously. So the Warriors would have to not only weigh how much to give Green in a potential extension, but whether they might prefer to trade him instead. It would come down to either Green or Butler in a blockbuster deal, and even as he comes back from ACL surgery, there’s no doubt Butler is the better player.
Thus, Green might be willing to take less money to continue playing with Curry. But the Warriors still might prefer to deal him.
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