For Draymond Green, Watch Collecting Is a Competition

For do-it-all Golden State Warriors forward and certified basketball brainiac Draymond Green, everything is a competition, including pastimes that occur way beyond the hardwood. Like collecting watches, which Green has been doing since signing his first long-term deal in 2015. If you’re not playing to win, his thinking goes, are you even playing at all?

It might not surprise you, then, that the very first watch Green locked in on—a rose-gold skeleton dial Audemars Piguet Royal Oak—was supposedly impossible to find, at least according to just about everyone he talked to. That just made him want the piece that much more. “I feel like if I get this watch I'm a winner,” he remembers thinking, speaking on the phone after a workout. “And if I can get this watch that means I won't see many people with this watch on as well.” Dray being Dray, he got the watch.

With a few years of collecting under his belt, he knows what he likes.He gravitates towards Audemars Piguet because he feels they make the most exclusive pieces—ones he won’t see on as many other wrists. And he remains competitive even with his more man-of-the-people options: he bought an Apple Watch—and then challenged CEO Tim Cook to a step-counting contest.

Below, Green talks about getting into watches, his favorite pieces, and separating the good collectors from the trend-chasing in the NBA.

GQ: How did you get into collecting watches?

Draymond Green: I've always had a love for watches. I never truly felt like I could afford them, but when I signed my first long-term deal in 2015. I was searching, searching, searching, and at that time, I didn't know anything about the watch market, I mean nothing. I'm just on Audemars Piguet’s website and looking at different APs, and I come across the rose gold Royal Oak skeleton with the double wheel. When I came across the watch, I'm just like, "That's it. That's the one I want."

I thought I could just click on the watch on the website and buy it. And so I clicked, and it's like, "Contact this place. Contact that place." And then I realized, whoa, you have to spend a certain amount of money to get on the list and all these different things. I had never bought a watch before. So I started speaking with a friend who's deep into the world. And I said to him, "I really want to get this watch. I've been trying to get it now for a month. I don't have a clue where to start." And at this point, I've spoken with enough people to know, it's almost impossible to get this watch.

I started speaking with him on Thursday evening. And I said, "I can't get this watch from anywhere. It's impossible to get." And he said, "I can get the watch." I had on an all-black Fendi crewneck sweater and it had two eyes on it—nice sweater. He's like, "All right, bet me this sweater that I'll get you the watch. And I'll get it by next Thursday." So I was like "Let's bet." No chance I'm losing.

Sure enough, he had the watch in his hand by Monday night.

It’s interesting that for four months you stayed hot in pursuit of this watch. You heard other people say that you weren't going to be able to find it. And you didn't just say, "Oh, okay, I'm just going to get another piece." What kept you from not just giving up and getting another watch?

Well, I'm the type of person where, once my mind is set on something and that's what I want, I'm just going to go after that until I get it. And if I can't get it, very rarely am I going to say, "Oh well, I can't get that one, but this one will do." So for me, that watch was so beautiful, that's the watch I knew I wanted to have.

Do you have a certain collecting style? Are there things that you are really attracted to? Or things that you avoid?

I am a huge fan of Audemars, [because they’re] super classy. Even when you get watches with sport bands, they're still classy. You can dress them up, you can dress them down, and it's sleek. They're really sleek. So I'm a huge fan of Audemars. My top three favorites in my collection right now happen to be Audemars. [There’s] the one I spoke of, I have the white ceramic Perpetual Calendar, and the black ceramic Perpetual Calendar.

Those happen to be my three favorites. And with the white, black, and rose gold, that pretty much covers anything that I'm going to wear.

After getting that first watch, were you inspired to get deeper into collecting?

Absolutely. It becomes the challenge of getting the right watches and the ones that you actually love. They're truly hard to get because the reality is AP is only producing 40,000 watches a year. And so, you start to look at the ones that you really want, and there's 500 of them or so produced in a year. And they're almost impossible to get. And so I really just enjoy the challenge of getting some of these watches but then also having those pieces, a part of my collection that one day I'll be able to pass down to my son.

My son's three years old, and he loves my watches. He comes and tries to take them off my wrist. He'll just run and put one on his wrist. I'm like, "DJ, your wrist is a little too small. You don't want that to fall off your wrist and fall on the floor." But it's a very sacred thing to me because it's something that I can pass on to my son, that I know in 20 years, those watches will still be amazing. They're timeless, and I enjoy that aspect of it as well.

Is there one piece that your son likes in particular?

He loves all of them but the one that catches his attention the most is the rose gold, the skeleton openwork. And I'm sure it probably catches his attention the most because there's so much going on, on the face of the watch that he's probably looking at it confused but it holds his attention.

Is there a reason why you think you gravitate so much to AP?

I think when you look at all the top brands, they all make great watches. I think for me personally, what I've loved about AP is just the fact that there's not many of them. If there are two things that I love, it's watches and it's sneakers. And the reality is when you walk into a room with certain sneakers on, and six other people in the room have on that same sneaker, you don't feel good about yourself. It's the same thing with watches. If you walk into a room and there are nine other watches just like yours, that's not a watch you really want to have.

Whereas, for whatever reason, you walk into a room and see one other person with [an AP] and it's a conversation starter because you know and you understand what that guy had to go through to get that watch. So it's a conversation starter and it's a very interesting conversation. I think for me, I just love the exclusivity that comes with owning certain AP watches.

I'm sure that's even more important for someone like yourself, playing in the NBA where everyone is able to afford these really nice pieces but maybe not everyone is going to take the time and effort to seek out the same ones that you are putting the effort in to get.

Absolutely. I think you get to a certain level and everyone can afford them. But like you said, what are you doing to find that piece? What is the challenge you’re overcoming to actually come up with that piece?

The white ceramic watch you have is really special. What drew you to that piece?

Well, I got the black one first. Once I saw that they were releasing a white one, it was a no-brainer for me. It has a different pop to it. When have you ever seen an all-white AP? And then, you start to get into all the complications with the moonphase, the days of the week, and the month. The thing I love about this watch is, if you don't know watches and you don't understand, you'll look at this watch and not have a clue of all the things that it's capable of doing. And I love that.

As a basketball player, one of the things that bothers me is everyone thinks they know the game of basketball. Well, it's the same with watches. Someone may walk up to you and look at your watch and see, "Oh, all right, that says moon phases on the white Perpetual Calendar. Oh, that says January, March, May, July. Okay those are the dates." But they can't really make out everything that this watch does. So I really love that.

And for me, being that I am darker-skinned, the white really pops off my skin. No matter what I wear, when I wear that watch, what's the first thing you're going to notice because of the way that it sits and pops off my skin? The first thing you're going to notice is my watch. As a watch lover, that's great. That's actually what I want you to notice. And so, that's why I love the white one.

The black ceramic Perpetual Calendar is a very classy watch. It's totally black, which means you can wear it with just about anything and it doesn't stand out. You can easily walk right by me and you only notice it if you know. I love that about that watch. I can wear in on a Friday evening, going to dinner with my fiancé. I can wear it on a Saturday morning, headed to swim lessons with my son and my daughter. I can wear it on Sunday to a wedding. And it'll look just as great in any situation, no matter how you're wearing it. That's what I love about the black ceramic.

And then the rose gold Skeleton, it's a statement piece. No one makes any rose gold watch as good as Audemars does. And very similar to what I said about the first watch, everyone thinks they know the game of basketball. You have to really know watches to know what's going on on the face of the skeleton AP and I love that.

Is there a complication or a feature that's really grown on you or become more important to you as you've learned more about watches?

I love the moonphase because it signifies the time of the day that it is, but it also gives you the responsibility to make sure that you are properly taking care of your pieces. If you don't take care of your watches, they lose the time. And then [the moonphase is] not always aligned. And it's not doing you the service that that watch should be doing you.

Are there other favorite watches outside of those three that you have?

I have a camo AP that I love—I have the green one and the face of it is like a very light, light peach. And I love the way those colors hit together. It's not as lightweight as the ceramic, but the watch is extremely durable because of the band. I feel comfortable just throwing it all around and if I'm jumping in the pool. It's just sportier. I really enjoy that one. The main reason I love it is just the dark green bezel. That piece just screams me. It puts me in a place of: "I'm Green.”

You have all these super fine luxury pieces but you also wear an Apple Watch, which is on the other end of the spectrum. What do you appreciate about that watch?

Completely different type of watch. And when I first got the Apple Watch, I probably had it for a month, maybe six weeks, and I wouldn't put it on. My fear was that you put on an Apple Watch and it's counting calories, it's counting stairs, it's counting all of these different things, exercise minutes. You're competing with people on it. I was worried that if I start wearing this watch, I'm going to love this watch, and then I'm not really going to get the opportunity to wear my other watches anymore.

But then my fiancé put hers on and she loved it. And I have several friends who have been into the Apple Watch for years. [My fiancé’s] like, "You got to put it on. It's great." Sure enough, exactly what I feared would happen, happened. And I'm now in this dilemma where we're now getting outside of the house a little bit more. I've thrown on some clothes and I really want to put one of my watches on, but I don't want to take my Apple Watch off because I haven't met my stair goal yet. Or, I'm in a competition and I need to workout more. And so, everything that I feared actually came true. So then, I end up having to teach myself the balance of all right, I can still wear my watches and wear my Apple Watch.

You mention competing with people on the watch. You specifically challenged [Apple CEO] Tim Cook.

In the heat of the pandemic, of lockdown, I found the watch very, very helpful and useful. That watch really held me accountable in staying in shape, because it gave me something to compete against. So every day, I'm competing against this watch. And as I'm doing it I’m thinking, I can't lose to a watch. In life, you may lose against people but I can't let this watch beat me.

And I reached out to Apple and I said I'd love to challenge Tim Cook—I'd love to beat him. He's obviously the CEO of Apple, it's their product, I'd love to beat him with their own product.

Tim was amazing. We had some friendly banter back and forth on social media. The day that we did the challenge was tough for me because I was on TNT that day. I had a couple of other things that I had to do. So my workouts were really spread out, and I was nervous because you can't challenge Tim Cook and then lose. But I wasn't going to respond to Apple, say, "It was a busy day for me. Tim may beat me, I'm not sure if today is the right day to do it." So I just figured out a way to make it work, and got my workouts in between the breaks.

What is the current state of watches in the NBA? Is it a competitive thing to have better watches than other people? Do you feel like more and more of your colleagues in the league are starting to get more deeply into watches?

There are a few guys that when it comes to watches—I really respect their collections and the things that they vet. But I also think just like everything else, it becomes trendy. And you can quickly and very easily separate the guys who have a tremendous love and appreciation for watches, and the guys who find it because they can and it's trendy and they're talking about it in a rap song. You can separate those guys very quickly. I don't have a huge appreciation for super trendy pieces. I have a huge appreciation for classic, nice pieces. I don't think it's, "Oh, you got this watch, I need to get that watch." There may be some of that, but I don't really participate in that group.

Who are the other guys?

Anthony Davis has an incredible watch collection. [Davis also owns an all-black ceramic Royal Oak.] It's not trendy; it's great pieces that he had to go through the proper channels in order to get those pieces. Lebron James has an incredible watch collection. Lebron actually has a watch that he did with AP—that's impossible to get. And I know he has a few of them. I've been trying to get one from him for years.

One of his watches? That he made with them?

Yes.

Oh, wow. I was going to say, I would almost be surprised that you would wear one of his watches.

I want that piece so bad. And it's impossible. And he just would not give it to me. The reality is, I mean, I'd buy it from him. I offered him money to buy the watch, but Lebron James doesn't need money. And so trying to find a balance of, "Hey man, I'm willing to pay for the watch. I really just want the watch really bad." It's a weird thing. And I've been very unsuccessful at it. But if there's one watch I want right now, I want that watch really bad. I've been trying for three years.

I didn't totally appreciate that those were so difficult to find.

It's impossible to find that watch, by the way. Even knowing him, it's still been impossible for me.

Originally Appeared on GQ