Who knew that Draymond Green was as gifted a writer as he was a podcaster?
NBC Sports' Dalton Johnson recently shared a long tirade Green went on regarding the weirdness surrounding one of the weirder free agency periods in modern NBA history.
Draymond Green just had A LOT to say about NBA free agency and the CBA on Threads
— Dalton Johnson (@DaltonJ_Johnson) July 8, 2025
Hard to argue with the points he makes here pic.twitter.com/9t1c94u8YL
While Green centered his comments around the lack of knowledge his younger peers have in navigating the business of the NBA (and before you ask, no, he wasn't jabbing at Jonathan Kuminga), there are many that agree with him. And given the new CBA in place, they all probably have a good point.
In short, the NBA's newest collective bargaining agreement is scary to deal with if you're a team that falls into any form of luxury tax territory.
A quick rundown of the luxury tax: instead of a hard salary cap, the 2011 CBA instead incentivized teams to stay under their given salary threshold. And the driver was more stick than carrot: non-compliant teams would be charged a match for every dollar they went over, and would lose access to to their use of the mid-level exception, a valuable tool when signing rotation-worthy vets.
Under the new CBA, not only does the stick get bigger, but another level of punishment was added should teams fall under a second tier or apron, set at $11 million above the first. In short second apron gets way more expensive, freezes a team's flexibility way more, and even bars them from using certain draft capital as a trade asset. And for teams that go into that second apron for enough seasons, their actual place in the draft order could be affected.
A lot of information to be sure (Yahoo Sports' Jake Fischer has a great comprehensive breakdown here), but it's enough to know that the new CBA has fully scared most teams away from spending how they normally would in free agency. And for the players that tried to play the free agent market as aggressive as before, that extra factor definitely surprised them enough to the point where Green felt the need to speak up.
And he's right on his other point too regarding how free agency works against the doldrums of the NBA offseason. While the frugality encouraged by the second apron is nice in concept, Dray (and NBA insider Chris Haynes on this segment) pointed out that the payment for such in entertainment value and news traffic is very steep, possibly too much so.
But what does this outcry mean, for both the league and Draymond?
Well for one, this new CBA could be seen as the death of the superteam era, with a labyrinth of domino effects accompanying it. The most recent Finals featured possibly the lowest star wattage among the competitors in NBA history. You'll be hard-pressed to find another Big Three that isn't either over the hill or that wasn't developed through the draft, at least until 2030 when re-negotiations about the CBA open up.
And for the "organically grown" Big Three's, this CBA even limits the chances that they'll get to retire together. Zucker's Bleacher Report article went on to speculate about whether or not Warriors owner Joe Lacob would have felt the need to let Klay Thompson go if the new luxury tax rules weren't so paralyzing. And if you're an OKC fan, watch out -- because that decision is likely coming to the Thunder as well.
As for Draymond, it's safe to say that his reputation on the court is as one of the NBA's few post-90's enforcers. And as entertaining as he is on top of that, most were penciling him in for a TV career a la Chuck or Shaq (honestly, he'd be great on the TNT desk full time). But his words spoken to the NBA's younger generation should stand out on their own. In his thread, Draymond called himself out as a possible candidate for Player Association president down the line. Knowing what we know of him, it was likely said lightly. But this deeply insightful, genuinely angry, well-spoken side of him is something that most fans rarely see. Maybe the presidency isn't actually too far off.
And after seeing him speak? He seems like he'd be pretty damn good at the job.