This year the Warriors are set to pay $172.8 million in luxury tax alone — more than the total payroll of 17 NBA teams this season.
As the new CBA fully kicks in this coming summer, the penalties for those over the tax get more harsh. It’s not simply the payouts — owners like the Clippers’ Steve Ballmer can shrug those off — but it also limits team-building options (tightening trade restrictions, limiting getting players on the buyout market). Which is why the Warriors want to get under that line and it is a team priority, Warriors governor Joe Lacob said on The TK Show with The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami.
“Our Plan 1, or 1A, is that we’d like to be out of the tax, and we think that we have a way to do that. That kind of is the plan, not just under the second apron. I’ll tell you why that’s important because the truth is, we need to be out of the tax two years out of the next four in order to get this repeater thing off our books. We don’t want to be a repeater. It’s so prohibitive, not to say we wouldn’t do it if we had to, but you’ve gotta look at the downside of doing that. So, that’s the plan, is to try to do that, and we think we can keep our team together and retain even the players that are, we might be able to bring players back at different numbers and so on.”
This flies in contrast to Lacob calling Lakers’ governor Jeanie Buss to test the temperature of a LeBron James trade (which LeBron’s agent Rich Paul shot down). That would have been insanely expensive, but it’s also the kind of move where money is not the concern.
Reaching “Plan A” and getting out of the tax would not be easy. As of today, the Warriors have eight guaranteed contracts on the books for next season (assuming Gary Payton II picks up his $9.1 million option, which is a safe bet) at around $137 million, but that does not include new contracts for Klay Thompson, Chris Paul or Kevon Looney. The luxury tax threshold next season is $172 million. Hypothetically, if Klay Thompson gets the same deal Draymond Green got last summer (four years, $100 million) the Warriors would have about $10 million for the remaining five roster spots it would have to fill — all minimum contracts.
It’s not impossible — not with things like the emergence of Brandin Podziemski, keeping Thompson’s roles smaller (and his contract cheaper) — but improving this core and returning to contender status while staying under the tax will be difficult. To say the least.
The window with Stephen Curry as a top-10 NBA player is only going to be open so long, this team needs to get better and more athletic, which means the Warriors have some hard choices to make this summer.
