Draymond Green isn’t buying the sympathy tour for the Nuggets after they lost Peyton Watson.
Denver’s failure to keep the restricted free agent this offseason has sparked the usual hand-wringing about the salary cap, but Green says that criticism ignores the reality every contender is dealing with now. On the latest episode of The Draymond Green Show, he argued that teams around the league are all trying to stay away from the second apron, and that the consequences of building through the draft have always been part of the deal.
“Everybody that includes all 30 teams is running away from that second apron,” Green said. “Which is why you then see issues like this.
I saw a lot of people like, ‘Oh man, it’s unfair that they drafted Peyton Watson, they built him up, they helped him grow, and now they have to trade him away because of the salary cap.’ And what I say to everybody who has that to say is shut the hell up.
“And the reason I say that is because the Golden State Warriors drafted Klay Thompson, Steph Curry, myself, Jordan Poole, Kevon Looney,” Green stated. “All of those guys were drafted, and decisions had to be made with our roster due to the Golden State Warriors drafting those teams. And there’s no breaks for drafting a guy and improving from within.
“You don’t pick up tax breaks and different things,” Green continued. “You hit that tax, you’re in the tax.
And so a great, great, great, great example of that is the Warriors. And you look at where the organization has gone.
No one talks about that piece of how the Warriors drafted great and ultimately had to make decisions between players that they had ultimately drafted. So I don’t hear that from anyone else.
“I don’t want to hear it because you’re talking actually a team that won championship after championship after championship and ultimately still had to make those decisions due to the new rules,” Green added. “Due to people not wanting a Kevin Durant to be able to go to Golden State.
So, you get these new rules, everybody got what they wished for. Now, everyone’s running away from the trade deadline.”
The Nuggets had reportedly been willing to go to four years and $70 million for Watson, but that wasn’t close to what he ultimately got. He landed a four-year, $88 million deal with the Cavaliers in a sign-and-trade, leaving Denver to face the kind of roster math Green says comes with the territory.
That math is harsher than it used to be. The NBA’s second apron, introduced in the 2023 CBA and taking effect in 2024-25, has changed how teams operate. Green called it a hard cap, and the league has made it clear why so many teams are treating it that way.
The apron was built with spend-happy teams like the Warriors in mind. Back when luxury tax penalties were the main punishment, owners could still lean into massive payrolls. Now there are extra limits stacked on top: no taxpayer mid-level exception, no sign-and-trade additions, frozen draft picks and more.
Denver is the only team currently sitting in the second apron, and the expectation is that the Nuggets will move salary to get out of it. Had they matched Watson’s deal, their luxury tax bill would have jumped from about $68 million to more than $220 million.
Green, who won four championships with the Warriors, said this is exactly what the league signed up for. He has been skeptical of the CBA since it was ratified in 2023, and in his view, the fallout was always going to look like this.
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