In this inaugural episode of the Draymond Green Show, Draymond Green opens by congratulating South Carolina’s women’s basketball team on their third championship in two years and lauds Caitlin Clark’s impact on the sport. He then argues that directly comparing women’s college basketball to the men’s game is a “recipe for disaster,” citing the 50‑year age gap between the NBA and WNBA and the fundamentally different marketing approaches—women’s basketball highlights star players while men’s college basketball emphasizes long‑standing coaches. Green warns that this comparison creates an unnecessary competition that could erode the momentum women’s basketball has built, especially when star power fluctuates year to year. He discusses the transition of women’s college stars (e.g., Clark, Angel Reese) to the WNBA, noting the challenge of maintaining visibility given fewer televised WNBA games. The segment shifts to a detailed play‑by‑play and body‑language analysis of Purdue’s Zach Edey during a championship game, where Green observed a visible loss of confidence that, in his view, explained why Edey’s 37 points were not truly dominant. He critiques the reliance on raw point totals without context, emphasizing the importance of reading player demeanor and game flow. Throughout, Green mixes praise, critique, and strategic insight, urging a careful, distinct approach to growing women’s basketball without forcing a direct rivalry with the men’s game.
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Welcome to the brand new Draymond Green Show YouTube channel. Hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any of our content. Shout out to South Carolina, Louis Vuitton, Dawn Staley, the GOAT, one of the GOATs, putting it together out there, building an incredible, incredible program, has built an incredible program, and they just took their third championship in two years, undefeated season. Took down Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes. Congratulations to Caitlin on an incredible career. Absolutely amazing what she's done for the game. I love how she pays her respects to the people that came before her, ultimately knowing and understanding that it's not just her, but the people that came before her and giving her the platform that they gave her. And then she did her job, which I always talk to y'all about Pete Myers telling me, you owe it to the game to leave it in a better place than it was when you found it. And for those that came before her and where they got the game to, she took it and took it to another level. And that's all you can hope for. So shout out to Caitlin, but more importantly, shout out to them champions. Shout out to the champions, the South Carolina— Gamecocks, much love. There's been a lot of talk going around over the last few days about women's basketball and college women's basketball pretty much all year and how the numbers were higher than the guys and how the star power was higher than the guys. And that's a very interesting and dangerous thing. I always talk about when, you know, WNBA or college women's basketball women's basketball in general start comparing themselves to men's sports. And ultimately, I think that's a recipe for disaster because number one, uh, when you start talking NBA and WNBA, uh, the NBA is 50 years older than the WNBA. 50. So that right there alone is already going to give you a big gap. Yeah. Like, because it's 50 years older. Like, so you automatically gonna have a gap just by the stages of where the leagues are, um, as far as, you know, uh, the, the length of time that the league's been going. So that's a natural thing. An interesting thing though, what's, what's been interesting to me is that all the talk and everybody pinpointing, like, see, better than the guys, better than this, more numbers than the guys, ticket prices higher. It's like people are actually pinning these two things together and creating this competition. And I think it's so wrong. I think it's actually horrible for the women's game because you start comparing where you don't— competing where you don't need to compare. And— To me, that's crazy. Like, you're never going to like pull your watchers from the men's game. Like— No, they can watch both. Like, they can watch the women's game, they can watch the men's game. But when you start comparing college star power for the women's game and college star power for the men's game, that's where it gets tricky because When you watch ESPN and they're highlighting the game per se, Iowa versus UConn, when you watch the women's game, they're not really highlighting the coaches. Although Geno Auriemma is such a legend that they always mention him, but they're not highlighting the coaches. You know who they were highlighting? They were highlighting Caitlin. Draymond Green, Clark, and Paige Beckers. They were highlighting the players, which is great, I think. But in college men's basketball, they don't highlight the players, they highlight the coaches. So when you watch a Michigan State play against a Kentucky, they don't put Tyson Walker picture up and Rob Dillingham picture up. They put John Calipari picture on the screen, and Tom Izzo picture on the screen. So college men's basketball has always been about the coaches. It's not about the players. So what you don't get marketed is like the player in college men's basketball. What you get marketed is the coaches. Coaches that's been there for all these years, 15 years. Calipari's leaving Kentucky. Coach Izzo been at, the head coach at Michigan State since 1995. 1995. It's almost 30 years. That's what is marketed. Not Xavier Booker, who's looking to take that next step next year. And so I think it's a very slippery slope when you start comparing those two things, because next year there won't be a Caitlin. Now, there'll still be Paige, and Paige is incredible. But my point is, you won't have that star power every year. Mm-hmm. And you can't just flip it then to the coaches. Like I never knew Iowa's coach name until maybe like this week. And like, I remember her last name, but don't remember her first name because she's not marketed. Caitlin Clark is marketed. So when you don't have that star power and now, and you're still being marketed up against these giants because their game will be marketed as by the giants that is Tom Izzo. Tom Izzo. The giants that is Calipari, the giants that are, you know, the list, the list, Bill Self, the list go Rick Barnes, like the list goes on and on and on. You're going to be marketed against those giants every year. And so in the year that you don't have a Kalen or even a Paige for that matter, are you still going to market against?
Yeah.
Those giants. And if you do and you don't have that star power, then all the traction that you've built now fall off. Because where does your marketing go? And does it stand the test of the giants versus the Giants? I think not, which is why I think it's a very dangerous slope to go down in comparing the two and making it, we're better than this, look at this, we did that. That's a slippery slope. And I think it's actually a very unnecessary slope. So now when talking about growing the women's game, now you have these players, Caitlin, Angel Reese, Cam Bream, Camila Cardozo. You have these players going to the WNBA. Now where that gets tricky is you're better marketed in college than you are the WNBA. WNBA is starting to take that next step. But the problem that you run into in the WNBA is now you're gonna have the Caitlin Clark's in the league and all this thing. And like you got great traction, but now you gotta find the game somewhere because there's more college women's games on TV than there are WNBA games on TV. So now you gotta be able to find the games. So that, that problem has to be addressed. As well. And so I said all of that to say, uh, women's basketball is in an incredible place, and I think it's great. I just said all of that to say, don't— like, let's not go back down the road of comparing the two because it just doesn't make sense. It's an unnecessary battle for no reason. And if you lose the battle, the unnecessary battle, then what? Yeah. There was never a point to create the battle. And not saying the women are creating the battle, uh, although you sometimes do see some of the women like, yeah, look at that. But I'm not saying the women that are creating a battle, I'm just saying in general, probably should tread a little lightly with that because it's unnecessary. Shout out to the UConn Huskies. Uh, Rudy Gay went to training camp with us earlier this year. He like, we a blue blood. I'm like, Rudy, y'all not a blue blood. And we talked about if they won it again, would they be a blue blood? They're probably blue bloods. With what UConn has done, to Dan Hurley's point, over the last 25, 30 years, you kind of gotta put them in the blue blood category. Going back to back, there was never a doubt that they win that championship. I had tweeted something about Zach Eadie and— You can go back and watch. Jax will probably go find the clip if we're allowed to put the clips up here, which we're on Bleacher Report. TNT had the game. Turner Family had the games. So maybe a clip can go up. But there was a specific play, maybe around like the 18, 19-minute mark where It was kind of haywire on Purdue and they end up getting a turnover. And I saw Zach Edey walking back down the court and he was like walking, like shrinking down, like head down. And I told my boys, I was watching the game with, and my wife was sitting there. I said, he's done. That's it. He's done. I have not seen his body language like that all tournament long. He's toast. It's not going great for him right now. And his body language dropped. But the start of the game, he blocking little dude, shouting, like looking at him like he was crazy for coming in there. And now that body language, he no longer believes. And the next plays after that, he ended up like giving up a couple offensive rebounds, which I hadn't seen him do all tournament. A couple guys drove to the lane and just got easy layups. He didn't even come over for the block. He caught the ball in the post and traveled. And I'm like, I told y'all, like I could see that in his body language. And then, you know, You know, when I tweet, I tweet because I just wanna tweet. I never really read y'all replies. And so I'm sure though, like I know how this thing works and most of these people out here don't really know the game of basketball. So I'm sure if I did read my replies, they probably said something like, "You don't know what you talking about. He had 37 points. How dare you say he quit, blah, blah, blah. He did his job." And the reality is, He finished with 37 points, but it wasn't no Zach Eaddy 37. It wasn't a dominant 37. What was dominant was like 20, 22. And then they bottled it up and they was just like, you gonna just shoot these jump hooks. We gonna take all these other guys away. You gonna fight, fight, fight against this one-on-one for these jump hooks from almost the free throw line. And we gonna see if you can make 'em. He was not moving the guys. He was backing down. So he was taking far jump hooks. And on top of him not being able to back the guys down and move those guys and taking those far jump hooks, like it was killing their demeanor and it was killing their spirit. And so as the game went on, UConn opens the lead up. They're now taking the 3 away the last 4 or 5 minutes of the game, pretty much inviting them to throw the drive to the hole or throw the ball into Zach Eaddy. And they drive, they're missing layups, he's getting little putbacks. That's how he ended up with a double-double. So that's how he ended up with 37 points. Like the last 15 points were kind of like garbage time. Like we're not giving up a 3, you can have these layups. And so don't come to me with the, oh, he had 37. I see through that. Was not a dominant 37. Shout out to number 35 and Clingan from UConn. He started it off and number 35 came in like, I don't care how, if I foul out or not, I'm using all these fouls. I'm just trying to— get under his skin. I'm just putting up a fight. And number 35 did that. And it was him that I saw that got to Zach Eady. Like, it was him that really got under his skin. Started with Clingan, but number 35 really got under his skin, and they did their job. And so I want to give those guys credit for the job that they did on Zach Eady, because when you always get the ball, you're going to score points.
Yeah.
So you're never gonna shut down a guy like that completely because you're gonna get the ball so many times, you're gonna score some points. But I'm not buying that 37. That 37 was not the 37 that you all who don't know basketball try to tell me on my Twitter. He had 37. Stop it. That was not a dominant 37. And now I just showed you how to read somebody's body language. So if you wanna go back and check out that clip, And see, at that moment where he was walking back and I said to my boys, "He's done." And then you wanna go watch him after that, go watch. And you've learned your lesson today on real points and garbage time points and real dominance and your number said 37 and how to spot blood in the water.
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