Draymond Green’s 10 Rule Changes To Fix The NBA: Ref Transparency And Draft Eligibility

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Draymond Green Show. On today's show, I am going to take Skip Bayless's advice, or his wish, and I'm going to put on my NBA commissioner hat. I'm becoming the NBA commissioner to attempt to, I wouldn't say fix the NBA because I don't think the NBA needs fixing. I think the NBA is great, but I think improve the NBA, make the NBA better. [MUSIC] The Draymond Green Show is proudly presented by Grooms. Grunz proves that you can do the least and still feel the most, thanks to a delicious daily habit that does the heavy lifting. Save up to 52% off with code Draymond at grunz.co. That's code Draymond at G-R-U-N-Z dot C-O. 10 things that I'd change to make the NBA a better place. Number 1 would be, I would change the NBA draft rule. You can go straight outta high school. I think there's every now and then, some players, especially in this draft, that are ready to go straight outta high school. If you don't go straight outta high school and you go to college, I think you should stay for 2 years of college. I don't think there should be one and done. I think what you're teaching kids with the one and done rule is to go to a place for 5 months, be half one foot in, one foot out, and then go on your way. 2 years in, you go in there, you know you're there for 2 years. And, or you're somewhere else, you know, you're there and then another place for 2 years with the transfer portal. But you're in college for 2 years and you're committed to something for 2 years, which aligns with you. A team commits to you for 2 years. If you're a first round pick, you get 2 guaranteed years. And then there's team options, right? I think it aligns with the 2-year thing. You're making a 2-year commitment. They're making a 2-year commitment for you. It familiarizes— Draymond Green. The college student with NBA rules right away when you talk about a 2-year commitment and what you can do, what you need to do over the course of 2 years. So I would change that. You know, the one and done thing has never quite been right. Like I said, you get people on a campus for 5 or 6 months. They're one foot in, they're one foot out, you know. I just don't think it's a recipe for success for the NBA. I don't think it's a recipe for success for college basketball, which ultimately makes up when, you know, speaking of KD, you speak on KD and his comments a week or two ago about USA Basketball. Like this all makes up USA Basketball at the end of the day. The basketball. Basketball on our continent. And so I think, you know, with us being in the driver's seat of that, how do we better prepare our students, our kids for the next level? And I think that's one thing that you can do. My second rule change will be more transparency with the referees. I spoke about this on an episode before. I just think, you know, in a league where you're so transparent about everything, it's the one thing you don't trend. You're not as transparent about it. And I think ultimately it allows people to question our league. It allows people to question integrity, the integrity of our league. And so I would like more— I would have more transparency with the referees. You know, if a player gets fined, if a coach gets fined, we know right away. If an organization gets fined, we know right away. Why is it that we don't know if anything happens with the referees? And I tip my hat to the referees players association. Excuse me. It's not a players association. The referees union, I tip my hat to them. They have an incredible union that none of these things have ever happened. 'Cause I'm sure the conversations have come up, but in a day and age where everybody's questioning transparency or everybody's questioning integrity, I think that's the one area where there isn't much transparency and it makes room for questioning. So I would change that. Number 3, I would let the defense have more leeway, you know, you're not just gonna hand check all the way up the court, but a quick hand check here and there. Like you gotta give the defense more leeway. I think ultimately at one point the NBA tipped so far left to score more points that people aren't really looking for that anymore. Like nobody's looking for a game to be 130 to 128. What people are looking for is a game to be 104 to 101. I think we thought we needed to be scoring in the 120s. It's not real basketball. 104-101 is an incredible game, a great game, right? Like, let's make 100 points mean something again. Guys are great enough to still do it, but giving offense so much leeway to where you're, you know, the scores are getting insanely out the roof, it's not great basketball. And we want to ultimately, as a— I speak as an NBA fan, we want to see great basketball. And I think defense having just as much leeway as offense, equal leeway, to defend. I think it makes the game, ultimately makes the game better. It ultimately makes these scores have to have skill. You're not just manipulating things like some of these scores in the NBA do. I think when you gotta actually score the ball, you really see the cream of the crop. You see the Kevin Durants, you see the Steph Currys, you see the Shea Gildress Alexanders, you see the James Hardens. You see when, when you really have to score the ball. I know everybody thought the foul merchant thing, on Shea. Shea averaged 32 points a game. He think he'd make 8 free throws a game. He steals 24 buckets, not 24 actual buckets, but I mean points, right? Like, so I think, you know, it requires the offensive player to really have that skill if you allow the defense to actually defend. My next rule change, and 4th on my list, would be to be able to knock the ball off the rim like they do in FIBA. If the ball is sitting on top of the rim, that can change some NBA games, especially with the athleticism of an NBA player. I had one where I was able to tap off the rim in a gold medal game. That was a huge play. It changed the game. And it took me into the gold medal game to figure it out because we don't play that style of basketball. So it takes some time. So as guys in the NBA figure it out, it would become, you know, tougher and tougher to score. But again, those are ways to make it tougher to score. Not necessarily not allowing the defender to play defense, not allowing defender to touch the offensive player. Those are different ways. Mm-hmm. To be able to control scoring, if you will. You know, you look at it, that's another way for the big man to have importance, right? Like that's another way to get basketball in a space where positions do matter, which we'll talk about in a little later in our rules list. But I think slapping the ball off the rim like you can in FIBA, I think that would be a huge change to the NBA, but a great one. My fifth change, if you use your challenge in the first half and it's correct, you should still have two challenges in the second half. So oftentimes you have to use your challenge on a terrible call in the first half and now you only got one challenge left for the game. A call happened in third quarter that really affects and swings momentum one way or the other, and you have to decide if you're gonna challenge it or not because you had to use one in the first half. Ultimately, these are referees' mistakes. This isn't the coach mistake that he had to use the challenge. It's the referee mistake. If he make a mistake and he get it wrong, then that's on him. You lose your challenge for the rest of the game. But in the first half, if you get your challenge right on a complete referee mistake, you should still have 2 challenges in the second half. You know, they got this thing in baseball where you just tap your cap and it's challenge, right? And like that could be a little egregious being how much stoppage it causes in an NBA game.. But I definitely don't think if you challenge in the first half and you get it correct on a complete mistake from, from the officials, that you shouldn't have 2 challenges in the second half. I don't think that's fair at all. And once again, goes into the transparency, accountability for officials bucket. Calling traveling more. Um, I think guys get away with so many travels in the NBA. It's not really something that's looked for. They kind of look for specific, they kind of look for specific travels. If you like going to the paint and like do the one-two hop step, they look for that one. They don't even call the catch and go travel as much as they used to. They used to at least call that one. But I think traveling is just a lost art in our game. You see guys get away with it so much. And again, as a defender, I'm judging your steps. On how I close in, what point I'm closing in at the rim based off where you pick the ball up and what your steps are, how I'm going to defend. If guys are just allowed to travel, as a defender, you're at a disadvantage again because you can't necessarily time what a guy's doing because they're doing something that's not within the scope of what they're allowed to do, but yet it's being allowed. And so I think traveling should be called more, uh, once again, something that helps the offensive player that completely hurts the defense. 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My 7th rule change will be, so there's this play where you see where guys, say for instance, they dribble left to start. And then once they get the defender going that way, they completely cross their body with the ball and move into the defender to draw a foul. And it's called a foul. 80% of the time. JK does, used to do this move a lot. I saw Keontae George do it the other day. He does it a lot. But a lot of guys do this move and I think it's so unfair to the defender. I can start moving, I put my arm out and because I'm sliding the way he need to go, once he just goes through my arm that's stretched out in a defender position, I'm charged with a foul. But this guy is putting the ball outside of his body, going on a completely different path through me that he wasn't on. So we talk about stand on the line of the path of the driver and not bumping them off the path. You shouldn't be able to just bump off the defender like that either. Right? And so I think that move need to be taken outta the game. It's a lot like the James Harden move that they took outta the game. Y'all punish James with that move. I don't think this move should be allowed. So— Draymond Green. I call on it. I would, me personally, I would change that rule. Like we're not just out here trying to find the best way to draw a foul. If you're a great scorer, you draw fouls, period. And if you gotta do little pet stuff like that, it should be called an offensive foul because technically you're going into the defender's area and you're going through the defender. It should be called an offensive foul. They'll stop doing it. My 8th change would be make positions a thing with All-NBA and All-Defense again. I think positions matter. I think again, you have something for Salt so long, in Tim Duncan era, there was positions, you know, in Bill Russell's era, there's positions, right? Like I think positions in these awards matter. It shouldn't just be 5 guards or 5 bigs. Positions should matter because quite honestly, positions do matter. There are positions in basketball. There's obviously this word that came about, positionless basketball due to the way the Warriors was playing. Let me tell you something, I'll give you— Yeah. I'll give you a news flash. We were never positionless. We always had positions. We just played off of reads, but we always had positions. And because we filled our positions untraditionally, people say, "Oh man, this is positionless basketball." No, it's not. I was at the 5. Kevin Durant was at the 4. We played, we had positions. Yeah. They just weren't your typical, what you're used to seeing at the 5 or the 4. So I think making, you know, the All-NBA team and All-Defense team positionless, I don't think that's the right thing. I think it should be positions based upon positions. And the NBA is getting back to position basketball. My 9th change would be based around player participation. Everybody, you know, there's all these rules in place of if you don't play 2 All-Stars on the road, blah, blah, blah. But when you go on the road, sometimes, Guys, what— we're high-level athletes. We have routines. You do things to get your body accustomed and ready to go. There's things that we have at our disposal that help us aid in recovery, aid in activation. You know, on the road, you completely are— you're already thrown out of the way you eat. Where you sleep, where you are, your familiarity, but you're completely thrown outta your routine. So for instance, we were in Memphis last week. Every day I get in the hot tub to get my body going. I mean, you're 14, the hot tub helped me a lot. If there's no hot tub, at least you get in the sauna. The Memphis hotel doesn't have any of those, but guess what? Neither does the Memphis Arena. So I had nothing. To possibly get my body ready. You go to some of these arenas, chairs are old, they're super low, they're awful for your hips. You sit there, you sit up and your hips are hiked up in this bad position. Guess what? That affects safety. That affects player health. Have chairs, you need to have new chairs. They should be a standard height for guys. We know these things. Right, you go to some places they've done it, most, a lot of places they haven't. We know these things. That should be a requirement. If we're talking about putting the best product on the floor, we're talking about player participation for fans, there's no reason that there's not a cold tub and a hot tub in every locker room in the NBA. Because again, that's a part of routine. That's player recovery. That's player health. That's player safety. But we talk all these things about how we want to make the games great, how we want players on the floor. But we have all these, these little things that affects player safety, that affects, that affects player health that we do nothing about. Why is that? That's a rule that I would change. I think it need to be changed. Every arena should have that in the visiting locker room as well. It doesn't have to be some crazy big— like space in some of these places are a challenge. It doesn't have to be some crazy big hot tub or cold tub, but at least have the opportunity to have one. Yeah. And again, in Memphis, nothing. And we're coming off a back-to-back, we're playing an earlier game, nothing. It affects things. My last rule in my 10 and wearing my NBA commissioner cap, my last rule change would be I would get rid of the 65-game rule for awards. I understand why the rule was in play. And I can promise you guys love playing basketball and wanna play. Sitting out with the Golden State Warriors sucks, man. They put you through these crazy workouts in the weight room. It's not a day off. Sucks. I promise you guys wanna play. If guys have a freak injury like Joker, an injury like Shea, it sh— if they're, if they've been good enough in a voter's mind to get an award, let them get the award. Because again, it's also cost guys before. You can't change it now. Right? Let them get the award. Talk to your voters. Hey man, I think y'all should take into account how many guys a game played, how many games a guy played. But people miss games for different reasons. If it's legit, it's legit. Injuries do happen. To punish someone because they get injured, this is the consequence of this rule and it's to protect against something else, but it's not, it doesn't quite solve the issue. So I would get rid of this, this rule as a whole, the 65-game rule. I just don't think it's ultimately as beneficial as it, as one had hoped it would be. Those are my 10 things that I would change if I was the NBA commissioner to make our league a better place. I think our league is a great place. I don't think it's a fix. I just think it's some changes that could help our league. You know, taking care of your mental health shouldn't be harder than taking care of your physical health. If you pull a muscle, you go see a doctor. But when it comes to finding the right therapist, suddenly it's frustrating. Long wait lists, huge out-of-pocket costs, and that's what usually stops people from getting help. That's why I'm excited about Roula. They make therapy simple, affordable, and fast. They work with most major insurance plans, and the average session copay is just $15. That's basically the cost of lunch, but instead of a sandwich, you're investing in your own head space. Thank you. And RULA doesn't just match you and leave you hanging. Every therapist is licensed, vetted, and chosen for their expertise. They check in to make sure you're actually making progress. You answer a few quick questions about what matters to you, pick a time, and you could be talking to a therapist as soon as the next day. No weeks of waiting, no back and forth. Therapy isn't a weakness, it's a tool. And RULA makes it simple to actually use that tool. Thousands of guys have already used RULA to finally get the care they needed. Don't keep putting it off. Go to RULA.com/Draymond and get started today. That's R-U-L-A.com/Draymond. Take the first step, get connected, and take control of your mental health. And as promised at the top of the show, now we will get into Golden Days. Golden Days is our segment that you all love. It's when you send in a memory to DraymondGreen@audacy.com and it may be featured on the show. And our Golden Days moment Today is from Mikey. Hey Draymond, love the show. I enjoy hearing the stories of how certain teammates like David Lee and Andrew Bogut from the past Warrior teams have impacted your career and squad. So I wanted to ask, what impact did Leandro Barbosa have on your career? I'll never forget his impact on Game 5 of the 2015 NBA Finals when he scored 9 points in 11 minutes. Leandro Barbosa is a teammate that I still keep in contact with. That was one of the best teammates I've ever had. One of the best guys you can be around. Having a veteran like that, right? Like what impact he had was his experience in the league and sharing those experience with me as a young guy. You know, when things aren't going right, he was one of the guys, albeit not the best English in the world, he's one of the guys that will talk to you, pull you to the side. Hey man, work on this. Try to do this. Try to do that. Was just a great veteran leader and a great presence in our locker room, which was ultimately why he was brought back as a coach. You know, he was an incredible guy to be around, you know, with obviously him coming from Brazil, his outlook on travel and how much one should travel just to get, gain different experiences in this world was big for me. I, you know, when I first played with Leandro Barbosa, The only place I had ever been out of the country to was Canada. And I was just driving up to like this camp that I used to work at, Olympia Sports Camp, like north of Toronto, way north of Toronto in the boonies. Outside of that, I had never traveled outside of the United States, you know, and just his thoughts on that and different things. But you know, and then also obviously most importantly, his impact that he had on us winning. Mm-hmm. Which was huge. You know, we all won our first championship together. And his experience was huge in that. You're talking to a guy who had played in conference finals. You know, he was one of the guys when we got to that moment, hey man, these things happen, this, that, we gotta do this, you know? And so LB was great. The vibe that he brought around the team, like the vibe that you need to have around a team, he helped me understand that, you know? And so LB was great, man. One of my favorite teammates of all time, a guy who I still keep in close contact with. Today. One of my favorite teammates for sure. That's it for my Golden Days moment this week. And speaking of Golden Days, man, I just saw a picture of David Lee with his amazing wife Caroline on Instagram. And D. Lee had his shirt off and bruh, six-pack was crazy. D. Lee, you done done the Oscar De La Hoya, man. Shout out to my OG, man. Much love to D. Lee. Much love to LB. That's a wrap from this episode of the Draymond Green Show. I wanna thank you all again to, for tuning in. Till next time, deuces. If you're rocking with the Draymond Green Show, be sure to click follow on your favorite podcast app. And while you're there, go ahead and drop a 5-star rating and leave a review. I wanna hear what you think. And it would also mean a ton to me if you share it with a friend that you think would enjoy it. Let's keep this thing growing. The Draymond Green Show is presented by Audacy and executive produced in conjunction with The New Media. Our executive producers are Leah Reese Dennis, Danny Friesinger, and Greg Holtzman. Video production and creative design by Curt Courtney, Tim Meekle, Lauren Vieira, and Evan O'Brien. Special thanks to the team at The New Media and the team at Audacy. Maura Curran. Josephina Francis. Hillary Shuff. Eric Donnelly. Kate Rose. Colin Gaynor and Jake Galli.