Draymond Green’s future with the Golden State Warriors emerged as a central theme during his 14th season in the NBA. Green fielded questions about it after the trade deadline in February and again last month after the team was eliminated from the play-in tournament in Phoenix.
“I’m not retiring from basketball,” he said in the bowels of the Suns’ Matchup Mortgage Center. “I still love to play. I think I’m still pretty decent. But this league we’re in is an interesting one. It’s one that you don’t really control everything.”
What Green controls is whether he makes $27.6 million in 2026-27 by way of the player option included in the contract he signed in 2023 with the Warriors. His market value — following his least productive season under head coach Steve Kerr — doesn’t match the value of his current contract, making the payday hard to pass up if maximizing money this year is Green’s main goal.
If Green exercises his player option, his contract becomes expiring — and easier to trade to an opposing team that’s hoping to clear its payroll next summer. It’s possible Green could decline his option and negotiate a longer-term deal at a lower number, giving the Warriors some leeway to bolster the roster this summer.
“The ball is in his court in terms of returning,” general manager Mike Dunleavy said Friday during his annual end-of-the-season news conference at Chase Center. “I think we’ve had discussions where we want him to finish his career as a Warrior. He kind of feels the same way. I would expect him to be back, but it’s his call on that.”
Trading Green — a core tenant of Golden State’s four-championship dynasty — seemed unfathomable until this year’s deadline approached. According to Green on his podcast, Dunleavy talked to him about “a couple deals,” including one for Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo that would’ve included Green or Jimmy Butler.
As Green explained on the February episode: Dunleavy “is like, ‘And by the way on the Giannis front — obviously we’ve spoken about Giannis. We’ve talked about what picks we’d send them. We haven’t talked about what players would go into the deal, but obviously if we were to do a deal with Giannis, you or Jimmy would have to be in a trade to make it work’” financially.
Hours after the deadline passed — with the Warriors acquiring Kristaps Porzingis from the Atlanta Hawks for Jonathan Kuminga and Buddy Hield — Green explained how it made him feel.
“It got nerve-wracking towards the end,” Green said. “It is what it is. It isn’t something I want to get used to, though.”
Declining the option in favor of a deal with an additional year at a lower price would all but ensure Green isn’t traded by Golden State. He’d probably stand to recoup the losses he’s facing this season in 2027-28 while giving the Warriors — who have 81% of their 2026-27 payroll committed to Green, Butler and Stephen Curry — more short-term flexibility to retool an aging roster.
Accepting the option doesn’t mean Green is a lock to be traded this summer or season, but with his play declining and his contract expiring, it heightens that possibility.
“I am committed to coaching him, coaching Steph, obviously, for as long as they’re here, and I look at them as collaborators, and what we’ve built is pretty special,” Kerr said Friday after Dunleavy’s news conference. “It’s so rare for a coach and two players to be together for 12 years as a trio. It’s remarkable, really. I’m ready to coach Draymond. We’ll see how it all plays out. It’s really more up to him than anything, and we’ll see how the contract stuff happens.”