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Myers’ Path to signing Wiggins and Poole
Updated: Nov 16, 2022
Bob Myers' decisions will affect the Warriors for a decade! The path he must follow is well-marked, but his choices are limited. Many will not accept his decisions, but as tricky as they are, the Warriors' future rests on his shoulders.
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BY TOM DIERBERGER - NBC Sports Bay Area
“The Warriors are caught in a pickle with their financial situation as heavy contributors to the NBA's luxury tax. Golden State has big decisions to make in the next couple of years regarding Green, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins and Jordan Poole, and has already seen role players Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr. depart in the offseason due to getting more money elsewhere.
Thompson, like Green, has two years remaining on his deal and will be paid $40.6 million and $43.2 million over the next two seasons. Wiggins is entering the final year of his max extension he signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2017. And 23-year-old Jordan Poole, after showing signs of star potential last season, will be a restricted free agent NEXT SUMMER if the Warriors don't agree to a rookie-scale extension by Oct. 17.”
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Draymond Green - Spotrac.com
Draymond Green signed a 4 year / $99,666,362 contract with the Golden State Warriors, including $99,666,362 guaranteed, and an annual average salary of $24,916,591. In 2022-23, Green will earn a base salary of $25,806,469, while carrying a cap hit of $25,806,469 and a dead cap value of $25,806,469 Max Deal. He's on the books for $25.8 million in 2022-23 and he has a player option worth $27.6 million in 2023-24. That means he could be an unrestricted free agent after the upcoming season.
How much is Draymond Green worth?
TSN's Steph Noh built a model to evaluate player contracts. You can read all about it here.
Assuming Green plays 2,100 minutes next season, Noh's model values Green at $31.0 million, so slightly more than he's going to make. Green didn't come close to reaching that minute total last season and Noh's model doesn't factor in age decline, but even a 20 percent drop off would value him at $27.8 million. That raises one more important question.
It's fair to wonder how much more Green, who is entering his age 32 season, has left in the tank. DARKO, which Noh calls the "best public predictive model out there," can provide some insight.
There's not a clear apples-to-apples comparison for Green because he's such a unique player, but Metta World Peace, Tony Allen and Ben Wallace fit the bill of defensive specialists with limited offensive games. (To be clear, that applies much more to Green, Allen and Wallace than it does to Metta World Peace, but he is still known more for his defense than his offense.)
Based on DPM, which measures a player's overall impact on the court, Green had a bounce back season in 2021-22, but Metta World Peace, Allen and Wallace were each clearly on the decline at the same stage in their careers.
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Jordan Poole: Spotrac.com
Jordan Poole signed a 4 year / $10,090,879 contract with the Golden State Warriors, including $10,090,879 guaranteed, and an annual average salary of $2,522,720. In 2022-23, Poole will earn a base salary of $3,901,399, while carrying a cap hit of $3,901,399 and a dead cap value of $3,901,399. Super-Max if he is an all star or wins 6th-man (5 years 190 mils) or 38 mils). https://www.spotrac.com/nba/golden-state-warriors/jordan-poole-31587/
Should Poole fail to qualify for the Super-Max this season; Anfernee Simons contract would be is agents goal.
Anfernee Simons: Spotrac.com
Anfernee Simons signed a 4 year / $100,000,000 contract with the Portland Trail Blazers, including $100,000,000 guaranteed, and an annual average salary of $25,000,000. In 2022-23, Simons will earn a base salary of $22,321,429, while carrying a cap hit of $22,321,429 and a dead cap value of $22,321,429.
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Andrew Wiggins: Spotrac.com
Andrew Wiggins signed a 5 year / $147,710,050 contract with the Minnesota Timberwolves, including $147,710,050 guaranteed, and an annual average salary of $29,542,010. In 2022-23, Wiggins will earn a base salary of $33,616,770, while carrying a cap hit of $33,616,770 and a dead cap value of $33,616,770. https://www.sportscasting.com/warriors-willingness-write-80-million-check-bad-news-andrew-wiggins/
Real GM projects a $127 million salary cap in 2023-24. If that’s the case, Wiggins would be eligible for a max deal of five years, $223 million or (44.6 a year with the Warriors.) While the 2021-22 All-Star wouldn’t land as much with a new team, he could still fetch a four-year contract worth approximately $172 million, or (43 mils a year.)
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Myers and Draymond had always had this understanding when this day finally came. Myers will not consider a Max contract for Draymond Green, but should Green decline to opt out of his current contract and play out the remaining year? The opportunity could add the fifth Larry to his Hall of Fame Legacy. With much appreciation from the Warriors' ownership, Green will be traded to a team acceptable to Green. This is a business, and Green accepts that fact but will posture from his Podcast platform of the inequity of the Warriors' decision. Green goes home, and gets his max deal in Detroit in a sign-and-trade next summer.
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Don't cry for Joe Lacob and the Golden State Warriors' ownership group
By Ben Rohrbach: Yahoo!Sports.com
I’m not sure how you can profess to be "light-years ahead of probably every other team in structure, in planning, in how we’re going to go about things" and complain about the rules governing the structure and planning that all NBA franchises are subject to, but Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob is sure trying.
Lacob will have you believe it's "very unfair" that the Warriors have to pay escalating taxes in order to keep a championship team together, when his unique ability to rage against that system is the very thing that turned his ownership group's $450 million investment into a $5.6 billion valuation in the span of 12 years.
The Warriors were coming off a championship and finishing a record-breaking 73-win regular season when Lacob delivered his infamous "light-years" diatribe, and three months later, a one-time 35% spike in the salary cap made it possible for the Warriors to sign Kevin Durant and form the greatest team in basketball history.
(The reason for that cap spike? A nine-year, $24 billion television deal that earned teams an average of $800 million to split between team owners and players. The next TV deal is expected to triple in 2025.)
In between, his team blew a 3-1 series lead to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 Finals, but that did not prevent the Warriors from drawing at least $359 million in revenue from a roster with a $100 million payroll the following season. That figure rose every year until March 2020, when Lacob informed us that Forbes' $474 million estimate of Golden State's revenue — a record-setting figure — was actually "understated." https://sports.yahoo.com/dont-cry-for-joe-lacob-and-the-golden-state-warriors-ownership-group-153523633.html