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Draymond Green Explains Why NBA's New Labor Deal Doesn't Help Bench Players (Video)


The NBA announced it reached a new labor deal with the player's union on Wednesday, but it looks like one of the league's top players was unhappy with it.

Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green sent out these string of tweets voicing his displeasure:


While the new deal includes a higher minimum salary, Green explained why the new labor deal doesn't exactly help bench players.
Sounded like you weren’t pleased with the new labor deal?

“I’m not. For several reasons. It’s not about me. I am by no means mad about my salary. I’m blessed. I get to play the game I love for a living and make a lot of money doing it. So to sit here and act like I’m mad at what I make, it’s not about me. That’s not what I’m mad about. When I look at these things, I look at a guy like Ian Clark or a James Michael McAdoo, the other guys and yet we’re all fortunate. At the minimum, we’re making, what, $600,000 to play basketball. I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m pissed off that anyone is making that because that’s less than 2 percent of America making that. We’re all blessed. But when you sit and look at the circumstances about how much money is involved in this league, in terms of that, I’m upset. It’s not about, like I said, where my status is at as an All-Star. You’ll be taken care of. As a superstar in this league, you’ll be taken care of. It’s not about us, it’s more so about the guys who aren’t on that level. When I look at my career, I didn’t expect to be at this level I’m at now. I kind of identify with those guys who haven’t made it to the level I’ve been fortunate enough to make it to. So when I think of contract negotiations in the CBA, I think about them, how can we help them. How can we help the guys who aren’t making as much make more? I left money on the table. So it’s not a matter of me making money. If I can’t live the rest of my life off my contract, that’s my fault. That’s nobody else’s fault. It’s not about me being mad for me. It’s about me being frustrated for other guys. When we go in these negotiations, guys are overlooked. I think it’s more about helping these guys be in better standing than what it is for an All-Star or top two or three guys on a team. Those guys will always be taken care of.”

They did raise a lot of the minimum salaries, gone up about 50 percent, raised some of the other exceptions. What is it you would’ve liked to see?

“I’m not going to go into specifics. I just got all these details last night. I spent a lot of yesterday evening going over these things, breaking down the memo I was sent of these changes. And things are going up. But they’re going up based on money that the league is making. They’re not going up on money the league is making, they’re not going up based on let’s take better care of these guys.”

So you’d like to see, for example, a higher minimum salary?

“It’s not even necessarily that it’s a higher minimum salary. There could be different structure to have not as many minimum players. Right now, there’s like a max and a minimum and a couple in between. I think there could be different structures to help those minimum guys make more and not be a minimum player. But like I said, there’s a lot of things that I’m still going over that I can’t really speak to every specific right now. I’m still reading over these things. Because there’s a lot. I want to be informed on everything that’s going on. I want to try to help guys who aren’t an All-Star, who aren’t a top-15 player in the league. How do we help 100 to 200 top players in the league? That’s more my focus, my frustration that I expressed. Everyone will probably say, oh, Draymond probably think he should make more money. I am doing just fine. It’s about everything else. How do you help the next guy up? How do you help put someone else in a better situation?”
Green explained more in the following videos:


-- Josh Dhani

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