Summer, in technical terms, still has almost three more weeks until the lights go out and fall rears its head from the shadows. Draymond Green doesn’t ascribe to that calendar.
It ended with the passing of Labor Day, he announced Tuesday on Threads, his apparent preferred social media website.
The offseason still very much is ongoing for the Warriors as a team that hasn’t made a move more than two months since free agency began. The roster only consists of nine players. But players are beginning to trickle in through Chase Center to work out and scrimmage with training camp starting at the end of the month.
Before veteran stars Green and Jimmy Butler make their way to the Warriors’ home arena, the two shared the floor in Los Angeles for a workout at the end of August. Butler shared photos and videos of the workout Sunday with a 20-slide post to his Instagram, using the caption “whatever @money23green said on the last slide.” And on that slide, Green made the same prediction he proclaimed during NBA All-Star Weekend less than two weeks after the Warriors acquired Butler from the Miami Heat at the trade deadline.
“We gettin’ that b—h this year,” Green said, referring to the Warriors winning the championship.
Green guaranteed the Warriors would win the championship on Feb. 16 as part of his TNT broadcasting duties. They, of course, did not. The Warriors went on a tear after Butler’s arrival, but then lost in the second round of the playoffs against the Minnesota Timberwolves without an injured Steph Curry.
About a month after his bold words on national TV, Green made an admission to NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole and Kerith Burke on the “Dubs Talk” podcast, saying he likes the Warriors’ chances at a championship even more the next season in 2025-26.
“I think coming back next year, I think we’ll be even in a better position than we were this year,” he reiterated at his exit interview press conference after the season. “Number one, because you can manage the season better, which helps when you’re trying to compete for a championship, especially at the ages we’re at. It helps a lot.”
The ages of the Warriors’ top players – Curry, Butler and Green – are a talking point that isn’t going away. The facts are, a team leaning on this old of a trio has never won a championship. Butler and Green working out together isn’t going to guarantee a parade down Market Street.
The workout and increased chemistry is what Butler promised, though.
“Now you’ve got a whole offseason,” Butler said the same day as Green at his exit interview press conference. “I get to be around my guys in the offseason. We’re going to get to vacay together. We’re going to get our kids together. We’re going to get to train together, build even more chemistry and then take this thing into training camp and into this next year, this next season, and do what we set out to do.”
The worry in bringing Butler into the Warriors’ locker room was if the big personalities of him and Green would clash. The opposite happened, at least in the first chapter. The next chapter appears to have begun with an even greater sense of commitment and understanding of each other.
Which will be critical for the Warriors both at the start of the season, as well as a playoff push later on. Led by Curry, Butler and Green, Golden State badly needs to get off to a strong start this season. The Warriors begin their campaign against LeBron James, Luka Dončić and the Los Angeles Lakers on the road and then welcome Nikola Jokić and the new-look Denver Nuggets to San Francisco.
They have five sets of back-to-backs in their first 17 games, making the Jonathan Kuminga situation that much more interesting with the need for a young scorer helping an older team on nights that look like scheduled losses.
Green played every game after the Butler trade. The Warriors went 23-7 to end the regular season in games Butler and Green played together, and they had the best defensive rating (109.0) in the NBA.
“Great,” Green said at the end of Butler’s Instagram post when asked how he’s feeling. “We ‘bout six weeks out. Right where I need to be, baby.”
Replicating those same results, a 76.7 win percentage, isn’t going to happen for an entire season. These Warriors aren’t going to reel off 63 wins. Even if a workout can’t predict a large number in the win column, the Warriors need Butler and Green to be the tone-setters while Curry runs the show.
Whether they’ll have enough gas in the tank to last is a whole other question.
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