Draymond Green has never been shy about challenging the NBA’s power structure, and the Golden State Warriors veteran is now taking aim at one of the league’s foundational economic rules: the salary cap.
Discussing the NBA’s investigation into alleged salary-cap circumvention involving Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers, Green argued that a light punishment should encourage more players and teams to test the system.
The scrutiny around Leonard intensified recently with a report about another sponsorship arrangement involving Daktronics, the company that supplied technology for Intuit Dome.
“If the punishments aren’t steep, everybody should do it,” Green said on The Draymond Green Show.
“If it’s just gonna be a slap on the wrist, then everybody should do it, and every player should be trying to do it.”
Green went further, suggesting the controversy should reopen the entire debate over limiting player compensation.
“Let the punishment be getting rid of the salary cap,” he said.
There is a reasonable labor argument buried inside Green’s provocation. The NBA’s 2026-27 salary cap is $164.961 million, with a second apron at $221.686 million. Star players drive a huge portion of the league’s value, and the system places limits not only on team spending but, through maximum salaries, on what its best players can command.
But Green’s suggestion that everybody should exploit the same avenue if the punishment is weak is harder to defend.
If the Leonard allegations are proven to involve prohibited compensation outside his NBA contract, that would not be a clever loophole. It would be circumvention of collectively bargained rules. There is a difference between finding an advantage inside the rulebook and deciding a rule is worth breaking because the penalty is manageable.
The latter could create an arms race in which the richest owners and teams with the most valuable outside relationships have the easiest time creating hidden compensation.
Eliminating the cap would remove that incentive, but it could create a different imbalance.
MLB set precedent
Major League Baseball provides the clearest American example. MLB has no salary cap, and the enormous spending disparity has become one of the central issues in baseball’s increasingly contentious labor fight.
The Dodgers opened 2026 with a luxury-tax payroll of roughly $415 million, while Miami sat below $82 million. MLB owners have now proposed a $245.3 million cap and $171.2 million floor for 2027, a plan fiercely opposed by the players union.
That does not mean baseball is inherently uncompetitive. Small-market clubs still develop stars and contend, while research has challenged the assumption that salary caps automatically improve competitive balance. That study found more consistent evidence that revenue sharing, rather than a cap itself, helped address disparities between teams.
Still, basketball magnifies the risk of concentrated talent. One elite player can influence an NBA game far more than one baseball player can. Without meaningful spending restraints, a handful of high-revenue franchises could theoretically stack multiple superstars at prices smaller-market teams could not justify.
There could also be consequences for players below the superstar tier. An uncapped market might send even more money toward the very best players without guaranteeing owners become equally generous with role players. Removing the ceiling does not remove each franchise’s appetite for profit.
Green is on firmer ground when he questions why player earnings should be constrained while franchise valuations explode. That argument received another jolt this week when the Lakers were sold for a record $12.5 billion.
But the answer to a restrictive system is not necessarily no system at all.
The more serious conversation may be whether the NBA has the right one: stronger revenue sharing, different maximum-salary rules, less punitive apron restrictions or a larger share of basketball-related income for players.
And if the league concludes that someone crossed the line in the Leonard case, the solution is straightforward: make the punishment strong enough that breaking the rules is not simply another cost of doing business.
