{"id":324365,"date":"2026-05-20T09:49:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/324365\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T09:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:49:17","slug":"warriors-and-draymond-green-are-at-a-crossroads-the-next-step-is-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/324365\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors and Draymond Green are at a crossroads. The next step is key"},"content":{"rendered":"

Draymond Green<\/a>\u2019s future with the\u00a0Golden State Warriors<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not retiring from basketball,\u201d he said in the bowels of the Suns\u2019 Matchup Mortgage Center. \u201cI still love to play. I think I\u2019m still pretty decent. But this league we\u2019re in is an interesting one. It\u2019s one that you don\u2019t really control everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u2014 following his least productive season under head coach Steve Kerr<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 doesn\u2019t match the value of his current contract, making the payday hard to pass up if maximizing money this year is Green\u2019s main goal.<\/p>\n

If Green exercises his player option, his contract becomes expiring\u00a0\u2014 and easier to trade to an opposing team that\u2019s hoping to clear its payroll next summer. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ball is in his court in terms of returning,\u201d general manager Mike Dunleavy<\/a> said Friday during his annual end-of-the-season news conference at Chase Center. \u201cI think we\u2019ve 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\u2019s his call on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trading Green \u2014 a core tenant of Golden State\u2019s four-championship dynasty \u2014 seemed unfathomable until this year\u2019s deadline approached. According to Green on his podcast, Dunleavy talked to him about \u201ca couple deals,\u201d including one for Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo that would\u2019ve included Green or Jimmy Butler.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Green explained on the February episode: Dunleavy \u201cis like, \u2018And by the way on the Giannis front \u2014 obviously we\u2019ve spoken about Giannis. We\u2019ve talked about what picks we\u2019d send them. We haven\u2019t 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\u2019\u201d financially.<\/p>\n

Hours after the deadline passed\u00a0\u2014 with the Warriors acquiring Kristaps Porzingis from the Atlanta Hawks for Jonathan Kuminga and Buddy Hield\u00a0\u2014 Green explained how it made him feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt got nerve-wracking towards the end,\u201d Green said. \u201cIt is what it is. It isn\u2019t something I want to get used to, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

Declining the option in favor of a deal with an additional year at a lower price would all but ensure Green isn\u2019t traded by Golden State. He\u2019d probably stand to recoup the losses he\u2019s facing this season in 2027-28 while giving the Warriors \u2014 who have 81% of their 2026-27 payroll committed to Green, Butler and Stephen Curry \u2014 more short-term flexibility to retool an aging roster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Accepting the option doesn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am committed to coaching him, coaching Steph, obviously, for as long as they\u2019re here, and I look at them as collaborators, and what we\u2019ve built is pretty special,\u201d Kerr said Friday after Dunleavy\u2019s news conference. \u201cIt\u2019s so rare for a coach and two players to be together for 12 years as a trio. It\u2019s remarkable, really. I\u2019m ready to coach Draymond. We\u2019ll see how it all plays out. It\u2019s really more up to him than anything, and we\u2019ll see how the contract stuff happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Draymond Green\u2019s future with the\u00a0Golden State Warriors emerged as a central theme during his 14th season in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[14844,7000,101,103,102,104,106,105,127,13340],"class_list":["post-324365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-draymond-green","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}