In the middle of the league’s growing Giannis Antetokounmpo frenzy, a new wrinkle has emerged that sounds almost too neat to be real, and yet fits the modern NBA’s anything-goes transaction math.
According to Brett Siegel’s reporting for ClutchPoints, one rival executive floated the idea that Draymond Green himself could be open to being moved in a Warriors package for Antetokounmpo, with a plan to return to Golden State in free agency this summer. The logic hinges on Green’s $27.6 million player option and the unusual possibility of a short-term “rental” stint elsewhere while the Warriors chase a blockbuster.
The executive’s quote is the gasoline: they suggested there are teams that might even be willing to help facilitate a Warriors-Giannis deal “if it meant they got Green for the next three or four months to pursue a title.” It’s a scenario built on mutual convenience, a contender gets an edge-setting, playoff-proven defender for a sprint, Milwaukee gets closer to the salary matching and asset haul it would demand in any Giannis trade, and Golden State potentially clears the runway for an offseason reunion with Green next to Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler and Antetokounmpo.
There are obvious complications. A team trading for Green would have to accept the risk that he could simply opt out and leave, turning any acquisition into a short-term bet. And the Warriors can’t operate as if a return is guaranteed, because the market and the rules don’t care about sentiment. Still, the idea resonates because it aligns with the tenor around Golden State right now: a front office trying to maximize what’s left of the Curry window, and a core player who has publicly treated trade talk as part of the job.
“If I’m traded, that’s part of the business,”
Green told reporters recently as Giannis speculation intensified.
What makes this rumor stick isn’t that it’s likely. It’s that it captures the desperation and creativity that always arrives when a true franchise-altering star becomes even theoretically available. If the Warriors are going to take a swing big enough to land Giannis, it will require uncomfortable decisions, and, as this scenario suggests, possibly a temporary separation from the franchise’s emotional engine that ends with him walking right back through the same door.
