Draymond Green entered this offseason vowing that the Golden State Warriors would remain a contender for NBA titles. His opinion hasn’t changed.
Green and the Warriors agreed on the terms of a four-year extension worth nearly $100 million, a person familiar with the situation said Saturday.
Green’s new deal will start with the 2020-21 season, so he’s under contract through 2023-24. Klay Thompson signed a five-year, $190 million extension with the Warriors last month, and Stephen Curry is under contract through the 2021-22 season, so three major pieces of the Warriors’ half-decade of success are locked up for at least three more years.
“I think everybody thinks it’s kind of the end of us,” Green said in June after the Warriors lost a six-game series to Toronto in the NBA finals and saw their run of two straight titles come to an end. “But that’s just not smart. We’re not done yet. … But yeah, I hear a lot of that noise, ‘It’s the end of a run’ and all that jazz. I don’t see it happening, though. We’ll be back.”
The Warriors added guard D’Angelo Russell this summer while losing Kevin Durant to Brooklyn as well as parting way with Andre Iguodala, DeMarcus Cousins and Shaun Livingston. So in many ways it will be a different Golden State team this coming season.
But the core — Curry, Green and, when he returns from his ACL injury, Thompson — will still be around.
“Our core — myself, Klay, Draymond, adding D’Angelo and a lot of hungry, young guys trying to prove themselves in the league — it will look different in terms of the lineups and things like that,” Curry said last month. “But the expectations of how we play and that championship-caliber basketball, that’s going to be for us always be the motivation and the challenge.”
Over the past five seasons, the Warriors have won 77 percent of their games, including playoffs — a total of 399 wins, 100 more than any other NBA team in that span.
Green has been an enormous part of that success.
He’s one of the league’s elite defenders, a five-time All-NBA defensive team selection and the defensive player of the year in the 2016-17 season. Green, Curry and Thompson are the lone remaining Warriors players to have been on each of their last three NBA championship teams, in 2015, 2017 and 2018.
Green averaged 7.4 points, 7.3 rebounds and 6.9 assists per game last season. Only four other NBA players — LeBron James, Ben Simmons, Nikola Jokic and Russell Westbrook — averaged at least that much in all of those stat categories.
Including playoff games, Green also had six triple-doubles last season. That tied him for seventh most in the NBA.
THE BOSTON Celtics will be at the Toronto Raptors as part of the league’s Christmas schedule. The marquee game will be the Los Angeles Lakers against the Los Angeles Clippers.
Other matchups for Dec. 25 are New Orleans at Denver, Milwaukee at Philadelphia and Houston at Golden State. The game times haven’t been announced.
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