Draymond GreenForward, Golden State Warriors

Draymond Green Spills on Behind-the-Scenes Warriors Contract Talks With Rich Paul

17 Sept 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:16

In this interview excerpt, Draymond Green explains how the degree of a player's involvement in NBA contract negotiations varies by individual and by the agent representing them. He contrasts his experiences with two agents—BJ Armstrong and Rich Paul—highlighting differing strategies: sometimes the agent restricts any direct player contact with the team to avoid leverage, while other times the agent encourages the player to speak directly with team executives like Joe and Mike to convey mutual interest and find a middle ground. Green emphasizes that a player's knowledge, the specific circumstances of the negotiation, and the agent's skill all shape the process and outcome of contract talks.

Chapters

How much of the contract negotiations does the player partake in and how much does the agent just take over for? I think it definitely varies by player. And then it also, the agent matters, right? Like, I can tell you my contract negotiation when I was with BJ Armstrong, we kind of had a meeting. He'd lay everything out. We worked from there. With Rich, same thing, lays everything out. And here's the difference. My contract negotiations with Rich has been different in every one. There was a point where when I was in the contract negotiation with the Warriors with Rich as my agent, and he was like, all right, we're not talking today. Like, you can't talk to them because they may use your relationship with them and they're going to say stuff to you and then they'll come back and use it against us. So you can't talk to any of them right now, right? We had another contract negotiation where he's like, yo, you call Joe, you call Mike. Y'all need to be communicating because this is important. I know you want to be there. They want you there. The numbers aren't really matching up. I want you to talk to them so they know how important it is to you. You know how important it is to them so we can all come into a middle ground. And so I think ultimately the player definitely matters. I think there are some players that don't have a clue and then the agents just bring Bring them a deal and that's that. I think the circumstance of the negotiation matters, and then obviously skill level of the agent matters as well.