We had high(er) hopes for the Golden State Warriors this NBA season, but it all fizzled out on Tuesday night in a bad loss on the road to the Sacramento Kings in a playoff play-in game. Now, the Warriors have tough decisions to make, and we can’t even begin to pretend that we understand the league’s salary cap: it’s full of exemptions and loophole nonsense requiring a Ph.D. in economics and a lot of other dicey knowledge. Doh!

However, we have ideas on what the team should do if it wants to capitalize on the last 2 years of play (possibly) for star player Stephen Curry. The other-worldly Curry has a guaranteed $115M-plus left on his contract, and he just turned 36 last month. Add up all the postseason games he’s played in, and that’s another year of mileage on his legs. Toss in injuries; that’s the equivalent of another season of wear and tear.

Curry is a transcendent talent who cannot be replaced, and he has been the Michael Jordan for this franchise over the last decade-plus. But he just had his least-valuable season since he was 22 years old, and he’s not getting any younger. Curry can still take over a game and dominate, as we saw this season, but relying on that to win every night is not a recipe for success anymore. The Kings proved that on Tuesday.

Thus, if the Warriors want to win another title in either of Curry’s final 2 seasons remaining on his contract, he needs better talent surrounding him, and this year’s roster just did not have that on it. We already discussed this week the two overpaid players who provided little value this year: shooting guard Klay Thompson and small forward Andrew Wiggins. Thompson is a free agent, and Wiggins is not.

This is where it gets difficult for some, as Thompson is a fan favorite and perceived as a key cog in the Warriors machine. However, his contract that just expired was signed in July 2019 when the team knew he was going to miss the 2019-2020 season already, and then he ended up missing the 2020-2021 season as well with a different injury. He already got 2 years for “free” with his last deal, and the team owes him nothing.

The biggest mistake in the salary-cap era of professional sports finance is paying a once-great player too much for future contributions that will come nowhere near the past ones. That is Thompson, exactly: he wants a maximum contract extension, but he peaked in 2014-2015 while being downright terrible the last 2 seasons despite scoring 19.8 ppg. In fact, he’s not been close to being the same player since missing 2 years.

Therefore, the organization should not re-sign him unless it’s to a non-guaranteed contract with a small per-year average ($5M, really). That may not be possible with his 13 years in the league, all with the same team. We don’t know those cap rules, and we’re not going to bother looking them up. Reality is that Thompson has been the 13th-/14th-best player on the team the last 2 seasons and doesn’t deserve a deal.

As for Wiggins, he is still in his theoretical prime at age 29, but he just had his worst season ever—and he is still under contract through the next 2 seasons, plus a third with a player option (which he’d be foolish to turn down at $30M). But he is not worth the almost $55M he is due for the next 2 years; just as the Warriors dumped Jordan Poole and his terrible contract last season, Golden State needs to do the same with Wiggins.

They will have to find a trade partner who either thinks Wiggins can still play at a high level or who wants to swap bad contracts. The Warriors might prefer the former while arguing that Wiggins just needs a change of scenery after his rough 2 years since the Warriors won the 2022 NBA title with him in a key role—ironically, also his only All-Star season. Some teams should buy into that, right? Hopefully, for GSW.

Point guard Chris Paul is under contract through next season (at $30M), but it’s not guaranteed—yet. In late June 2024, it becomes guaranteed if the Warriors still have him on their roster. As much as we love CP3, he is not worth that at this point in his career: he turns 39 in May and just had the worst season of his career. It may be time for him to retire or find a situation where he can play for a winner at a very low salary.

That takes care of the toughest choices: saying goodbye to Thompson, Wiggins, and Paul. After Curry, the next highest-paid player is front-court menace Draymond Green ($24M). Say what you want about Green, but the team needs his toughness. He also represents the second thread to the 2015, 2017, and 2018 title teams once Thompson is ceremoniously shown the door. So a running tab now? $79.86M for 2 players.

Moving down the contracts for next season, in monetary order, brings us to Gary Payton II. He has a player option for $9.1M, and he’d be foolish to decline it. The fans and organization love him for his contributions to the 2022 title team, even though he only played 15.5 mpg last year. The team would have to use him more in 2024-2025, and as he was sixth on the team for WS/48, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, necessarily. So be it.

Three players now, at basically $89M, and the next player on the list is Kevon Looney. He was third on the team last year in WS/48, despite playing only 16.1 mpg. At $8M in the final year of his contract, he’s going to be motivated to play his best ball and secure a new long-term contract after next season. This can play into the Warriors’ hands in many ways, so we now have 4 players for $97M under contract for next season.

Jonathan Kuminga is up next at $7.6M with a team option, and we think the Warriors will keep him in the fold despite his mediocre WS/48 which was 9th on the team last year. He’s still young, and one more year with the team can really tell the GSW front office what they’re dealing with in terms of long-term options. Now, this makes 5 players—and maybe a starting lineup—at the rate of almost $105M for the quintet. Okay.

Moses Moody also has a team option deal for next year ($5.8M), and he was as about as valuable as Kuminga (26.3 mpg) last year, albeit in much fewer minutes played (17.5 mpg). Both players will be 22 next year, so the organization is in evaluation mode as it decides what to do with its youth movement that started during the 2 seasons Thompson missed to injury, which were wrapped around Covid dynamics.

So, now we are up to 6 players for about $111M, and we come to the 2 rookies from last year with guaranteed money for their sophomore seasons: Brandin Podziemski ($3.5M) and Trayce Jackson-Davis ($1.9M). Both these rookies turned out to be great picks, especially TJD who was tops on the team in WS/48 last season. Podziemski delivered comparable value to Kuminga and Moody, as a rookie. So maturity will help.

We have a roster with 8 players on it now, totaling around $116M-plus. The only other person who could get guaranteed money for next season is Gui Santos, non-guaranteed $1.9M on the table. He will be 22 in June, and he posted the second-best WS/48 value on the team last year. We think the Warriors would be smart to keep him around and see what he can do before making a decision on a team option for 2025-2026. Check.

Now, that makes 9 players at about $118M, with a roster breakdown as follows, with positional flexibility:

  • PG: Curry, Podziemski (SG)
  • SG: Payton (PG/SF), Moody
  • SF: Kuminga (PF)
  • PF: TJD, Santos
  • C: Green (PF/SF), Looney (PF)

With the cap projected to be about $141M next year, this still gives the team some flexibility on signing some free agents who want to win now, playing with Curry, Green, and Co. Now, they still shouldn’t give that extra $23M to Thompson, because he’s washed up and done. Trust us on this one. The Warriors have proven themselves to be clever cap managers, too, even though the owner has said no more luxury taxes. Okay.

What players will come available by the end of June? No one knows for sure. But Golden State would be an appealing destination for many veteran players looking to join Curry for a title run. The luxury tax may not kick in until $171M, once the exceptions and loopholes are all employed. So, in essence, the team has about $52M to play with in rounding out a roster that can be competitive, on top of these 9 players already noted.

That’s a lot of money, definitely enough to sign a few good-to-great players like swingman DeMar DeRozan, perhaps, who is still playing at a high level despite his age (35 next year) and made $27M last year. Throw in the possibility of two more rookie draft picks coming at comparable levels to what Pods and TJD came in at ($4.5M), and this team gets 12 rostered players with cap flexibility still under the luxury level.

So maybe another $20M can be spent on a still-valuable player who wants to win with Curry: center Jonas Valančiūnas ($15M last year) comes to mind, actually. GSW actually has just one draft pick right now (second round), and that can change with trades. If/when Wiggins is traded, who knows what happens? Anything, and that would change all of this speculation, obvi, but hopefully you get the idea. Flexibility!

The Warriors roster come October 2024 will take shape piece by piece until then, yet we like this preliminary plan (of course, we do; we wrote it). Only time will tell, but we’re firm in believing the team needs to part ways with Thompson and Paul, while finding a way to get rid of Wiggins and his contract, too. If Golden State wants to help Curry go out in a blaze of glory, the front office will do the hard things now.

[Editor’s Note: if there are errors in the “capology” logic employed here, we don’t debate them. It is what it is.]