It’s almost impossible to imagine Draymond Green in a non-Warriors jersey, but Bill Simmons has just enough creativity to not only do just that, but also come up with the superstar roster that would play beside him.
The prominent sports podcaster said on his show, “The Bill Simmons Podcast,” on Wednesday that he sees a future where Green ends up with the Dallas Mavericks.
“I have my half-baked idea-slash-prediction for Draymond’s next season: I think he ends up in Dallas with Kyrie and with Luka, and then LeBron tries to figure out a way to get there eventually,” Simmons said. “Yeah, that’s my prediction.”
This is more of a guess than report, but the Ringer founder and former longtime ESPN personality turned to his producer and asked him to “put this in my file of predictions to be unleashed 18 months from now.” Still, it’s funny to think about the dysfunction a team that has three ball-dominant superstars with strong personalities, alongside a hothead like Green, would get into.
“I don’t know, I’m just feeling a Dallas scent,” Simmons added. “There’s some Dallas stuff that feels ‘scenty’ to me.”
Whenever this strange Warriors season ends, this is a preview of what comes next. There’s been little actual reporting on Green’s future, and plenty of speculation. The Warriors forward has a player option for next season that he could decline to become a free agent, either to see if a market that would give him a good contract exists, or to join a super team, as Simmons opines.
After Green punched Jordan Poole in the face in October, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that he would “almost assuredly” exercise that $27.5 million option. Other than that, there was Green telling Bleacher Report in February that the “writing’s on the wall” about his time with Golden State coming to an end, but that could just mean the year after his option when he becomes an unrestricted free agent.
However, since the incident with Poole, Green has looked more and more like the best version of himself. He’s defending better, facilitating more efficiently and getting into it with opponents with trash talk he can actually back up. The only good reason to break up this partnership would be to make Simmons’ prediction come true and see how catastrophically funny that clash of personalities would turn out.
