Skip to main content

Warriors' Draymond Green gave football an ill-fated try in 2011

It's always fun to project how a star basketball player might perform on a football field, and there is no shortage of them who have tried. In fact, some have had success. Then there are those who have made the switch more as a gag than as a career change.

Enter Draymond Green.

The Golden State Warriors star, who comes off a one-game suspension to play in Game 6 of the NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday night, tried on a helmet for Michigan State in the 2011 spring football game. The results were, well, less than stellar:

Suffice it to say Green was on the right track all along with basketball.

He averaged a double-double as a senior at MSU and became a second-round pick of the Warriors in 2012. Now, he's on the brink of winning back-to-back NBA titles with Golden State. As for football, Green told MLive he got a new appreciation for football after giving it a try. According to the report, the two plays captured on video were Green's only two snaps of the day. NFL Media analyst Bucky Brooks suggested Green could have developed into a contributing football player had he spent more time on the sport and received more coaching.

"It's never as easy as it looks," Green said after the ill-fated attempt. "I thought I knew what I was doing, until I got jammed at the line of scrimmage. It's not easy. It's like basketball. It looks easy, but it's not."

Hey, at least he knows his calling.

Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter *@ChaseGoodbread*.