Draymond Green has spent his entire NBA career with the Golden State Warriors. He’s been a big reason why the team has four championships in the last decade or so, but reality is starting to set in that his time with the franchise could be coming to a close.
It seemed like a possibility last season ahead of the trade deadline when there was chatter about Green potentially being moved. That did not come to pass, but the fact that he is only playing on a one-year contract this upcoming season already has insiders speculating that he may be moved.
Warriors might have been better off moving on from Draymond Green
However, there’s a case to be made that the Warriors would already be better off if Green had departed the Warriors back in 2023. On his podcast, Green spoke about that near-departure and how he was offered more money by the Memphis Grizzlies in a sign-and-trade deal, but ultimately he decided he wanted to stay with the Warriors because in negotiations it became clear to him that they wanted him to stay.
Keep in mind, this was following the 2022-23 season which was marred before it even began after Green struck Jordan Poole, with the fallout from that petty much ruining the season. The chemistry was off even though the team was coming off a championship, and the Warriors ended up trading Poole rather than Green.
Maybe a fresh start was needed back then though. If Green had left that season and Klay Thompson had still left the following year, perhaps the Warriors would have had more flexibility to make moves to build around Stephen Curry in the following years.
Instead, the nucleus has still remained somewhat in place and now the Warriors are stuck in a strange spot where they are neither rebuilding nor contending, which is not the most enviable place for an NBA team to be.
No one knows how things would have played out and maybe things would still largely be the same, but at some point the Warriors will have to move on from Green unless he has a bounce back season and the team is better than most people think.
It’s not fun to imagine Green with another organization given how impactful he has been for the Warriors over the years, but tough choices are going to have to be made in the coming years for the franchise. Perhaps some of those decisions could have been avoided, or taken care of earlier, had they moved on from Green back in 2023.
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