5:53pm: The trade is official, the Warriors confirmed in a press release (Twitter link).
3:47pm: The Pacers intend to waive Joseph, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link). Essentially then, Indiana’s motive in the deal was to sell off the worst of its 2024 second-round picks.
2:23pm: The Pacers are acquiring veteran guard Cory Joseph from the Warriors, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania. Indiana is sending out a second-round pick for Joseph and cash (Twitter links).
The pick will be in this year’s draft and will be the least favorable of the three second-rounders the Pacers currently control, per Anthony Slater of The Athletic (Twitter links). That second-rounder will likely be Milwaukee’s or Cleveland’s.
The Pacers are receiving $5.8MM in cash from Golden State and will also acquire Charlotte’s top-55 protected 2025 second-rounder, reports John Hollinger of The Athletic (Twitter link).
Golden State will reduce its luxury tax penalty by $13.5MM by lopping off Joseph’s $2MM cap hit, Yossi Gozlan of Hoops Hype tweets. The Warriors now have a $172.8MM projected luxury tax penalty with a $379MM combined payroll and tax payments.
Indiana has a roster spot opening, so it doesn’t need to waive a player to make room for Joseph. The Pacers have plenty of depth at point guard, so it’s unclear whether it has any plans for the 32-year-old. Joseph has appeared in 26 games off the bench this season, averaging 2.4 points and 1.6 assists in 11.4 minutes.
Joseph played the past two seasons and part of the previous campaign with Detroit.
GS doing alot to improve the team
your solution please
Give a lot of credit to Lacob. Warriors could have eaily traded away several players and saved millions in luxury tax, and no one would have blamed him. Instead, he’s giving Warriors core and Kerr another shot. Unbelievable.
Let’s go Warriors!!!
The good times don’t last forever.
They have already done a lot. Their biggest issue is defense. And it looks like they have solved that. Wiggins is meshing well Kuminga with Draymond playing the 5. They have won 5 of 6.
Warriors are probably going to convert Quinones contract since they only have 13 standard contracts, and still save little in luxury tax. 15th player will only be signed at season end as always.
If they sign him it should be to a 2 years deal. I see him being a very good back up next year.
Yes, and 2nd yr would be non-guaranteed.
The Warriors didn’t make any significant moves because:
1. They are locked-up by the new luxury tax rules. Just look at the Joseph trade: $13.5M tax on a $2.2M salary?!?
2. The older players like Paul, Thomson, and Green have low trade value and the Warriors wouldn’t get any better players in return.
3. The younger players like Kuminga and Moody are relative bargains so trading them would officially kill to the 2-timelines project.
The Warriors already made the biggest moves by trading away Wiseman and Poole. The real questions are:
1. Will Thompson take a team friendly contract and change his game to match his current abilities? Does 4-years at $100M sounds reasonable?
2. Is there another player available this summer that can play defense and facilitate for Curry like Green?
They could of used the deadline to get under the tax. Trading wiggins, cp3, looney and gp would have freed up a lot and potentially give them some assets to improve in off-season. Before dunleavy took over they were very proactive in getting the roster better. Now they are overly loyal and reactive.
Trading those guys wouldn’t have helped the Warriors. Nobody was really interested in Wiggins. CP3 has more value in the off-season. They need GPII’s defense.
Not just brutal, cheap too. $13million is a big deal to you and me but not to Lacob who “in September 2019, bought a beach house in Malibu for $29 million. His primary residence is a 14,000 square-foot mansion in Atherton, California, that he acquired in 2007 for $19.8 million.” Almost every function of the Warriors-including salary and compensation-can be expensed or slickly written off his and the other owner’s taxes.
Relevance?
The $13.5 mil (albeit minus the $5.8 they paid the Pacers) in “Luxury Tax” savings that the “trade” produced. The Warriors got no enhanced value in picks or personnel but Cory Joseph is out of a job, and perhaps worse, doesn’t get to hoop for the rest of the season: that’s nasty and unnecessarily parsimonious-and I’m a Warriors’ fan.
The Warriors are better off not having made a move. They seem to be over the hump. The team is buying into the defense scheme, and it shows. Unlike last season, when they went to the 2nd round of the playoffs, they actually have a bench that doesn’t suck. They have 7 bench players that they can rely on in crunch time. Last season, anyone beyond Divencenzo was a disaster. In ’22, they didn’t come together until the playoffs. This team has a chance to go deep.
This team has a chance to make the play in.
That was our move?
What move should they have made?
If the Warriors make it past the play-in they won’t make it very far. Look at the +/- this season compared to the 21-22 championship season. Only Kuminga and Moody have improved…
PLAYER +/- (21-22) 23-24
Stephen Curry (8.0) 0.1
Klay Thompson (2.1) -1.0
Draymond Green (4.2) 2.6
Andrew Wiggins (3.6) -2.9
Gary Payton II (2.5) 1.8
Jonathan Kuminga (0.5) 1.7
Moses Moody (-0.8) 0.0
Kevon Looney (2.0) -1.6
Your comparing a full season vs. a partial season. Their defense is starting to come together. Wiggins is starting to play like he did in ’22. The bench is also much deeper.
This trade doesn’t do anything but I wonder if Dunleavy and Pritchard did the deal in person.