{"id":379334,"date":"2026-06-29T15:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/379334\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T15:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:13:09","slug":"sources-warriors-eye-lebron-ad-moves-as-green-declines-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/379334\/","title":{"rendered":"Sources: Warriors eye LeBron, AD moves as Green declines option"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Golden State Warriors<\/a> are planning a pursuit of LeBron James<\/a> in free agency and Anthony Davis<\/a> via trade this week, league sources told ESPN’s Shams Charania, opening up the flexibility after Draymond Green<\/a> declined his $27.6 million player option Monday morning.<\/p>\n

Green had until 5 p.m. ET to decide on the option. For weeks, team and league sources indicated that Green would turn down the one-year financial guarantee and the Warriors would work with him on a new contract — lowering his salary for next season — only if it freed up the immediate flexibility for Golden State to secure a significant roster upgrade.<\/p>\n

Hours ahead of the option deadline, Green’s decline is a blaring indication that the franchise has something brewing and signals a shift in his and the franchise’s belief in what they can possibly pull off this summer.<\/p>\n

Green, James and Davis are represented by the same agent — Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul.<\/p>\n

Team sources have indicated for weeks a planned pursuit of James via free agency, but early intel told them that James was likely to return to the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>. Negotiations with Los Angeles in the lead up to Tuesday’s free agency, however, have gone nowhere, appearing to crack open the door.<\/p>\n

The Warriors now have the flexibility to offer James the full $15.1 million nontaxpayer midlevel exception, regardless of any trade pursuit of Davis with the Washington Wizards<\/a>. League sources believe any Davis hunt in the coming days is an extra motivational tactic to lure James. The two won a championship together in 2020 with the Lakers and have remained close friends.<\/p>\n

To acquire Davis, the Warriors’ matching salary would almost assuredly have to include superstar wing Jimmy Butler<\/a>, who is nearly four months removed from ACL surgery. He is making an expiring $56.8 million next season. Davis is making $58.4 million in 2026-27 and has a $62.7 million player option for the following season.<\/p>\n

The Warriors have relayed to Butler behind the scenes that they prefer to keep him.<\/p>\n

“You talking about being traded?” Butler told ESPN last week. “It wouldn’t be the first time. [But] it’s good to know that I’m wanted here. If I get traded, I get traded. Their job is to win. Can I help them do that? Yes. If they feel like somebody else can help them do that on a quicker timetable than whenever I come back, then they got to go and do that, but as of right now, I’m here.”br\/]<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Golden State Warriors are planning a pursuit of LeBron James in free agency and Anthony Davis via…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[153443,153442,750,112,114,113,7000,31949,22716,2497,129,100,7638],"class_list":["post-379334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-153443","tag-davis-anthony","tag-espn","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-green-draymond","tag-james-lebron","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-news","tag-washington-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379334","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=379334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}