With Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Andrew Wiggins set to earn a combined $148MM in 2022/23, the Warriors will once again blow by the luxury tax line (projected to be at $149MM) next season and will likely have the NBA’s most expensive roster. However, the rising cost of Golden State’s payroll won’t prevent the team from retaining breakout guard Jordan Poole, president of basketball operations Bob Myers told Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports.
“No, no,” Myers said. “I mean, thankfully (I) work for an ownership group in Joe (Lacob) that has committed all kinds of resources to winning. And I know that because every time I asked him about roster and strategy, it’s always winning.”
The Warriors’ team salary in 2021/22 was approximately $176MM, while their accompanying tax bill is worth $170MM+, meaning the team is spending about $346MM on this year’s roster. Golden State will remain subject to the NBA’s more punitive “repeater” taxpayer penalties as long as its team salary remains above the tax threshold.
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“You don’t need me to tell you what our payroll is. It’s pretty high,” Myers told Goodwill. “So he just wants to win. And we’ve spent a lot and we’ve kept all the players we want to keep, so I don’t see that changing.”
As expensive as the Warriors’ roster is, the organization makes a significant amount of revenue as a result of deep playoff runs like this year’s, as Tim Kawakami of The Athletic has outlined. Retaining key rotation players like Poole will help give Golden State the opportunity to make more of those runs and maximize the earning potential of the Chase Center.
Poole is under contract for one more season, but will be eligible for a contract extension this summer and appears to have made a strong case for a deal worth at least $20-25MM per year. The 22-year-old averaged 18.5 PPG and 4.0 APG in 76 regular season games (30.0 MPG) in 2021/22, and is at 18.4 PPG and 4.5 APG in 16 playoff contests (30.1 MPG).
If Poole signs an offseason extension, it would go into effect in 2023/24, at which point Andrew Wiggins‘ maximum-salary contract would be off the books, which could help lessen the Warriors’ financial burden. Of course, as good as Wiggins has been this year, the team may want to lock him up beyond his current deal too. Based on Myers’ comments, it doesn’t sound like Lacob would say no if the front office believes it’s the right move.
There will never be real parity in the NBA until owners agree to an actual hard cap that applies to everyone.
As long as the big pocket owners run the teams and the Board of Governors, and a number of players make the big salaries, it will never happen.
It’s discouraging to see Lacob and Myers simply outspending the rest of the league like this, despite the penalties. When a team’s tax penalties are nearly at the level of their salaries, and will be even higher next year, the system is totally screwed up- it’s no longer preventing these travesties.
The penalty money is distributed to the other owners as “hush money” to keep the other owners from raising a bigger protest. GS may pay the penalties that the other teams benefit from, but they are still paying this huge payroll to keep all the players they want to keep. Few other teams get to keep all the players they want at any cost.
Of course, Golden State is operating within the rules as they currently exist. The point is that it’s simply unfair to the small market teams with less wildly affluent ownership groups.
I don’t have any hope of a hard cap, which would be the best way to go for all 30 teams. It’s time for the rules about exceeding the soft cap to be reviewed in the next CBA and be made considerably less generous in these extreme cases. Maybe the luxury tax/repeater penalties could made much more severe.
If they are willing to spend like that and pay the huge taxes, that’s up to them. Blame your owners for being cheap. Literally every team has this opportunity, small market or not. Let’s not act like Golden State was a huge free agent destination before steph and klay took off.
Exactly, GS never was a coveted destination. There are two things that make a franchise’s free agent destination and those are “Big Market” and Good management.
If the kings would have drafted that Steph-Klay-Dray- core and keep on spending and building, they could of be as big as GS now.
Kevin Durant didn’t come to the Bay bc of good management. He came bc they had good players. Big market, good weather & having elite players is the keys to attracting top free agents
Good management leads into getting good players. GS had the luck of getting transcendent talent in Curry and an incredible fit with the other guys. I have NEVER heard people talking about GS being a big market before the SC era, so the key imo is Good management. That’s the kickoff to everything else. Of course other factors as weather, taxes, etc., have an impact too.
BTW Good management means be willing to spend big money deep into the luxury tax, besides other things as drafting well etc.
Good players come all type of different ways. Management often doesn’t matter. It wasn’t good management that brought Shaq to Orlando or LeBron to Cleveland. It trips me out how yall are so quick/willing to give credit to coaches/gms but so critical of & hesitant to give credit to players. You literally call this the Stephen Curry era yet give the credit to good management lol that’s just crazy. It’s all about the players in the NBA, this seems like an extremely obvious fact
It was ping pong luck that brought Shaq and LBJ to ORL and CLE.
But those were obvious choices, good management brought Ginobili-Parker-SC-Klay-Dray-Jokic-Giannis-Kawhi, etc. etc. to their respective teams.
Nothing is one sided, always are multiple factors in every choice in life, NBA isn’t different. Good management is absolutely key though.
GSW, and Curry too, got extremely lucky that Curry was struggling with ankle injuries in his early days, that was a blessing in disguise. That first SC contract led to the oportunity of kinda “cheat” the payroll’s gaining a lot of flexibility. But that chance was fullfiled in success beacuse of the decisions of the front office = Good management.
You think Steph was lucky to go thru what he did with his ankle issues? Smh it’s very clear that you’re unable to see things from the athlete’s point of view. You are far from alone here. Steph lost out on tens of millions of $, went thru extreme physical & mental pain bc of that ordeal. He very obviously was not lucky to have experienced that. It was definitely a blessing in disguise for the Warriors franchise. This seems to be the only pov that you & frankly the vast majority of guys on here are capable of seeing tho. Which is so weird to me bc like aren’t these players the guys that we’re the fans of? Also aye I guess you can call them “cheating” Steph out of tens of millions by using his injury history against him as “good management” if you want but that’s clearly not the reason KD came. He came bc Steph, Klay & Draymond are much easier to play with than the guys he was with in OKC. OKC has “good management” as well. They’re run as competently as any team in the league but that didn’t keep KD there & that’s not what brought him there in the 1st place either
So, bad management resulted in the drafting of Curry, Poole, Thompson, and Green? It was bad management not to trade Curry, or Thompson.
Wth is this person talking about? Someone translate
Every Warriors fan remembers the 1980 NBA Draft and Cohan. Bad Management. It is why it took the Warriors 40 years to get back to the Finals. Because of good management, they drafted Curry,Thompson, Green, Poole and signed a bunch productive Free Agents. They came real close to trading Curry and Thompson. That is what brought KD to the Warriors.
LOL!
# of minutes going to homegrown players in these playoffs (top 3):
MEM: 73%
BOS: 70%
GSW: ……. 69%
Sorry for the teams that missed on the draft and/or are hurt by injuries. But let’s make a hard cap to drive players’ salaries down and give these poor owners and front offices more excuses for their bad luck.
Maybe look and see why certain teams never make it vs teams that continuously seem to compete. I promise the cap isn’t the primary reason why some teams don’t make it and others do.
Or they should just ax the salary cap altogether to expose the BILLIONAIRES who are too cheap to pay for the talent necessary to win.
the correct answer. I swear capitalism is extremely popular in this country unless it benefits a certain group of people. College & pro athletes are definitely in this category
“The penalty money is distributed to the other owners as “hush money” to keep the other owners from raising a bigger protest. ”
I have heard that the NBA doesn’t necessarily distribute the penalty to the other teams. Instead they vote at the end of the year on what to do with it. I am not sure if this is true or not.
I disagree. Warriors are one of the few teams where paying all this money makes sense.
They tried that it failed. I think the NBA has better parity right now than the other leagues over the last 5 years.
Pools is super fun to watch. Totally worth every penny.
Which former Wolverine would you rather have on your team if you could have them for their entire career, Jordan Poole, Jalen Rose, Jamal Crawford, Franz Wagner or Juwan Howard? Rank if possible…
Not on your List, but, Chris Webber, Glen Rice, Cassie Russell.
So basically you don’t have an answer
Howard.
Please stop with your silly lists and questions. Leave it to the writers
Lmao this def made my day
jimmy king.
Love owners that will spend money to win . I hate hard caps in sports.
who gets more $ in next contract, poole or brunson? Poole better than brunson IMO, but prob debatable.
Its a really good question, i lean towards Poole as the better player, but maybe he looks better on the GSW offenseive scheme. I think both are better fits in their respective teams, i don’t know if Brunson will thrive as much as Jordan in GSW, and im not sure if Poole will thrive as much as Jalen in DAL. It seems, i didin’t checked the numbers, that Brunson is a better ISO scorer than Poole.
Both excellent at creating their own shots. Poole more with his quickness and Brunson more with strength and physicality.
I don’t think you should have to trade or let go the players you develop. That is why the NFL sucks. Drafting well should be rewarded. GSW has done everything right under this ownership. An example on how to run a team.
See… made sense not to sweep the last round to get a couple more nickels and dimes revenue from a Game 5 at home hahaha
I also think that teams should be rewarded for drafting well and showing commitment and continuity to the team and fanbase. So, how about some system where compensation for players that a team drafts are not subject to the luxury tax (or taxed at a much lower rate).
It’s Myers way of saying Warriors dont have to give extension this offseason.
And that Wiggins doest have to be traded… It will be one interesting offseason for Warriors. Let’s win the title first and then worry about the rest later!