Draymond Green Says Grizzlies Offered $10M More Before Warriors Blinked

Draymond Green now says his 2023 free agency wasn't the formality it looked like from the outside. Per Green, the Memphis Grizzlies had put roughly $10M more on the table than Golden State's opening bid — enough to get him seriously eyeing a move to a Western Conference rival before the Warriors upped their number and handed him the four-year, $100M deal he ultimately signed.

Green insists it wasn't a bluff. To make the bigger Memphis money work, he'd have needed his old team to cooperate on a sign-and-trade, and that's where things reportedly got messy — Green says the Warriors moved the goalposts in trade talks with the Grizzlies right as they raised their own offer. Golden State declined the sign-and-trade, Memphis went a different direction, and Green came back to the Bay for almost identical years and dollars to his prior contract.

What Almost Happened In Memphis

The fit made sense on paper. Green playing help-side center would have freed Jaren Jackson Jr. to roam and swat shots, and Green's throwback, physical style would have slotted neatly into the lineage of those grind-it-out Grizzlies teams. Instead, Memphis traded for Marcus Smart and shipped out Dillon Brooks — Green's longtime antagonist — closing the door on the whole idea.

Green compared his play to Andre Iguodala's 2017 dance with the Rockets, where Iggy leveraged a rival's interest into a raise from the Warriors before eventually being flipped to Memphis in a deal that netted the pick that became Bub Carrington. The through-line: Green used the same leverage in the negotiating room that he uses guarding bigger centers in the paint.

There's a what-if buried here, too. Memphis cratered in 2023-24 amid Ja Morant's lengthy suspension and injuries across the roster, so a healthy, motivated Green might have mattered. But that's a counterfactual, not a stat line — and the stat lines are what your roster cares about.

The Fantasy Fallout

Let's be blunt about where Green sits now. He posted 8.4 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5.5 assists across 68 games last season (2025-26), good for 25.1 fantasy points per game and our No. 141 overall rank (No. 47 at his position). His last five games ran 3.1 fantasy points below his season average. That's a specialist, not a foundation piece — useful in deep leagues for defense and dimes, streamable elsewhere.

The players actually attached to this saga tell a better story. Desmond Bane, now in Orlando, put up 20.1 points, 4.1 boards and 4.1 assists over 82 games (33.7 FPTS/G last season, 2025-26) and ranks No. 60 overall — a rock-solid starter despite a recent cold stretch of minus-7.2 fantasy points over his last five. He's the biggest name orbiting the old Grizzlies core and remains a clear roster hold.

Dillon Brooks, the man Memphis chose to move on from, landed in Phoenix and quietly scored (20.2 points, 29 FPTS/G in 56 games last season, 2025-26, No. 103 overall). His minus-2.8 form dip over five games is noise. Bub Carrington, the pick born from the Iguodala saga, is a Wizards deep-league flier at 21.8 FPTS/G last season with a nice plus-5.6 recent bump.

Bottom line: this is a fun leverage story, not a roster-mover. Green stays a matchup-based stash in category leagues that value assists and steals — WATCH him, don't spend real capital chasing him. If you want the productive names from this tree, Bane is the buy and Brooks is the steady scorer worth holding.