Draymond Green: Puka Nacua couldn’t play in the NBA

The debate over whether NFL players can play in the NBA and vice versa has picked up steam recently with Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards telling ESPN he could play in the NFL, and more recently, Puka Nacua of the Los Angeles Rams saying he could play in the NBA.
Draymond Green weighed in during a discussion with San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner that was part of Tuesday’s episode of Warner’s podcast, “The Warner House.”
Warner said he doesn’t have any skin in the debate because “I know for a fact I can’t play basketball. Like I tried playing basketball growing up. It wasn’t my sport.”
But he was curious what Green thought.
“I’ll be honest with you. I’m not tough enough to play in the NFL. I’m just not,” Green said.
He pointed to the fact that an NFL running back is going to get hit at the end of every play with the lone exception possibly coming on a touchdown.
“This running back just mentally got himself ready to run through this hole and he know it ends with him getting hit,” Green said.
On the “Nine and Dime” podcast hosted by his teammates Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp, Nacua boldly declared he could play in the NBA, as previously reported by the Deseret News.
“I think it would be so easy to transition from the NFL to NBA. Like, less than three months,” he said. “Probably 3-6 months, I truly believe I could transition to play point guard or shooting guard for one of the (30) teams in the NBA.”
Green disagrees with Nacua’s assessment.
“Brother, no, you can’t. I promise you that you cannot do that. I’m just here to tell you,” Green said of Nacua.
He doesn’t think any NFL player could be successful in the NBA.
“There’s so much skill in the NBA to think that you can go from the football field and then walk onto this court with this kind of conditioning with this speed — like if I go run gashes with you, I’m gonna die, right? But if you come run back and forth with me on the basketball court, you gonna die,” he said to Warner. “It’s a totally different thing, man, and so I don’t think there’s a single guy in the NFL that can come into the NBA and play in the NBA and vice versa.”
Green believes playing in the NFL is “a different mentality” and “a different beast” compared to the NBA.
“I don’t think people fully understand what they are saying they can do when they say ‘Yo, I can go play in the NFL.’ No, you can’t,” Green said.
He doesn’t think it’s possible for an NBA player to make the transition.
“There is not one single player in the NBA that can play in the NFL,” Green said.
Green said an NBA player’s athleticism is different than the athleticism needed for an NFL player.
While he admitted that Edwards has the overall athleticism that could make a transition to the NFL possible, Green questioned whether he has “the quick twitch muscles to get in and out of a break if he playing receiver.”