In the end, it wasn’t some upstart youth who knocked the Warriors off a pedestal into an uncertain future. Boston is nothing like redemption on the final climb to the mountain, nor is Denver earning playoff streaks by hitting King.
No, the thing that sent the Light Years team into existential despair wasn’t next-model basketball for the space age…it was a 43-win team playing cavern basketball that opened the deciding game with Seven deployments in a row and push them into submission. What year is this again?
The Warriors here, however, is where all contenders ultimately end up late in their tracks: old, expensive and trending towards mediocrity. It will be increasingly difficult to keep the core together in any kind of cohesive fashion going forward. Even relative to other recently aging competitors, these warriors are somewhat older and Widely More expensive.
Not only is the Warriors leading 44-38 despite being in relatively good health, but it’s just that everyone is getting older and no help is around the corner. Among the mainstays of this race are Steve Curry at 35, Klay Thompson at 33 and coming off with two serious injuries, and Draymond Green also at 33. Andre Iguodala, if you remember him, is 39 years old and has played eight matches this year.
Wait, it gets worse: Father time is taking its toll, but the new CBA is here to finish the job. The Warriors have spent freely to keep this team together, and especially to increase it once Kevin Durant leaves. Their willingness to gut a huge luxury tax bill to funnel that money over to Andrew Wiggins (eventually) earned them an extra crown in 2022.
However, the rules became harsher when warriors could use greater flexibility. Golden State will only have minimal contracts available to increase the roster unless it slashes and burns what is currently there.
Green has a player option and could become a free agent, though Shams Charania and Anthony Slater both report an extension looks more likely. Jordan Paul, coming off a streak where he was almost unplayable, is about to see his salary rise from a great ($3.9 million) to a potential liability ($28.2 million, assuming his $500,000 incentive to win Defensive Player of the Year doesn’t kick in). Thompson is set to earn $43 million next year despite being, at this point, a fairly mediocre player who has been ruthless in most of the playoffs.
It becomes increasingly difficult for successful teams to mentor youngsters, and the Warriors learn that part, too. They thought they had a workaround with the help of a dreadful 2019-20 season that yielded the second pick in the draft, and a one-sided trade to Wiggins that gave them the seventh pick a year later. Unfortunately, the two players selected together played without relevant minutes in the second round of the playoffs. two-track RIP, which is a lot trickier than it sounds, as it turns out; The odds of any draft turning into the franchise’s next Carrey are pretty slim.
The question now for Golden State is even if they want to keep that rolling, how can they? The cap rules will continue to undo them. For example, guard Donte DiVingonzo is DiVingonzo after only making $4.5 million last season. He’ll almost certainly opt out of his $4.7 million deal for next season, and he’ll likely have offers for full mid-level exclusion, which the Warriors’ cap prevents them from matching or even replacing.
Despite this, one wonders if the Warriors will need more pieces. They have over $205 million in projected salary next season if Green chooses to re-sign or roughly the same amount, which would put them $55 million over the tax limit. Combined with the repeater penalty, that would mean paying nearly $250 million in luxury taxes to the league, which is more than any other team. Payrollto keep a 44-win team aging that can’t make any additions.
can’t work. Warriors have to figure out how to get younger and cheaper, and the only sensible way is to get rid of at least one of their core pieces. There really is an obvious place to start, at the shooting guard position, that Thompson and Paul will combine to bring in $71 million next season. Even by warriors’ standards, that’s quite a lot for a single position, and they don’t even get surplus production from it. Thompson finished the playoffs with a rating average of 9.4 points. It was 9.7 for urine.
But what is really possible with these two? Where does the external demand for these contracts come from? Excuse me, but nobody wants to pay Thompson $43 million next year. The Warriors are stuck, stuck, stuck.
Trade Andrew Wiggins? Certainly, he’ll have plenty of the market given his reasonable four-year extension, relative youth (28) and that he plays a position every team is eager to fill. But that would also leave a huge hole in the list on the wing as the Warriors have no ability to fill themselves, other than praying so Jonathan Cuminga – the man they hid at the end of the bench last month – can take over the role.
Kevon Looney and Gary Payton II are on good contracts for at least another year and will have some commercial value, but both will probably be more valuable in the Warriors system than they would be by playing for most other teams. Also, isn’t the whole point about giving away one of the whale contracts and preserving the value guys? Besides, striking an $8 million deal doesn’t change the big picture for the Warriors much.
The warriors will be on the phones looking for something to ease the crisis. They can trade their first-round picks on draft night and they can trade one future (they owe their 2024 pick to Memphis), and they might need at least one of those just to offload Thompson or Poole and make the payroll semi-viable.
They can also resort to deeper tricks, such as using the stretch clause on Thompson and then re-signing him to the minimum or MLE taxpayer; Such a move could keep the Warriors under the second apron, but adding $14 million in dead money in the following two years could hurt their future tax standing.
Speaking of which, if there’s any good news here, it’s that the Warriors’ situation is looking significantly better year after year. They may need to weather a raging storm in 2023-24, but a year later, Thompson’s $43 million has been dumped, and Green will be a $27 million-less number this year. It is reasonable for warriors to be below the tax threshold by then, believe it or not, and can operate without restrictions in the trade and free agent markets.
The fly in this ointment is that Curry will be 37 by the end of the 2024-25 season. It’s in its infancy that the Warriors rightfully seek maximum maximalism, so hitting the ball low in 2023-24 doesn’t seem like a great plan to that end. The problem is, I’m not sure there is a better one. Old, expensive and average is a tough place to be in the NBA. But, after a streak of four titles in eight years, next year’s Warriors look like they’re headed. Fighting their way out of it would be their greatest achievement yet.
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(Top photo: Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images)