Draymond Talks About Paying it Forward to the New Generation

There will always be a little friction between the different eras of NBA players. The younger generation certainly looks up to past eras, full of the players they dreamt of being like. However, it seems more difficult for the older generations to respect the youth.

This is because of a variety of factors. First of all, the game is completely different. Everyone likes how things were done “in their day”, and it’s no different with basketball. Older players are seeing the lack of defense, mass three-point shooting, and load management as taking away from the style of basketball they are used to. 

Then there is the money. These new players are getting paid millions of dollars more to play basketball. In some cases, you have players who are barely in NBA rotations making more than NBA stars of the past made during their whole career. 

Draymond Green doesn’t think that this dynamic of negative energy between the older and younger generations is necessary. 

“Pete Myers -- I'm sure you know Pete Myers, he was an assistant coach my first two years under Mark Jackson -- he used to tell me a couple of things. He would say, ‘Hey, Draymond, a couple of things I want you to always remember in this league -- as long as you're dealing with this league, you owe it to the game to leave it in a better place than it was when you found it.’ “And he said, ‘You get paid in this league for the next young guy to get paid.’ It's so often in this league [that] you hear guys complaining about, ‘Oh, man, this young guy is now making this,’ or you hear how an older guy tried to crush a younger guy, and it derails a young guy's career. And [Myers] was always telling me, ‘You get paid for the next young guy in this league to come along to get paid.’”