The Golden State Warriors are still in contention for a playoff spot but the future of their aging core may be up in the air. Klay Thompson headlines a group of pending free agents for the Warriors, with a few other non-guaranteed contracts as well.
Warriors owner Joe Lacob joined Tim Kawakami on Audacy’s “The TK Show” and outlined what Golden State’s main goal for this offseason is.
“We have expiring contracts this summer. We have a lot of flexibility as a result, and that was pretty important given the changes to the CBA,” Lacob said (10:00 in player above). “You really can’t have this kind of payroll in the future without being severely impacted in terms of the things you can do as you know, and our fans know, the second apron. It’s all really true, and it does impact us. We’re already in really good position for that this summer. We’ll make decisions based on how we’re doing.”
The Warriors currently sit in 10th place in the Western Conference after Wednesday night’s loss to the Clippers. They’ve still won seven of their past nine games with a matchup in Utah on Thursday night before the All-Star break.
But this isn’t where anyone expects a team with a $400 million payroll to be.
“This was a tough trade deadline,” Lacob continued. “We had to make some pretty big decisions for the short term and take some gambles, and we also had to maintain our flexibility going forward.”
Lacob revealed that the Warriors had an opportunity to gain a net $80 million for this season at the deadline but opted against it. That type of financial flexibility is going to be important this summer, though.
“Our Plan 1A is actually we’d like to be out of the (luxury) tax, and we think we have a way to do that. That kind of is the plan, not just out of the second apron,” he said. “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 (tax) thing off our books. We don’t want to be a repeater, it’s just so prohibitive. Not to say we wouldn’t do it if we had to, but you’ve got to look at what the downside is to doing that.
“So that’s the plan, is to try to do that, and we think we can keep our team together and retain – we might be able to bring players back and different numbers and so on. So that’s kind of Plan 1A.”
That sounds like a pretty ideal plan if everything does go the Warriors’ way, but Lacob is prepared to call an audible as well.
“But there’s a Plan 1B, and 1B is we can go even further than that and we can make big changes if we had to, if this team were to slide all the way down here and not do well at the end of the year you know there’s going to be big changes. But if we do really well, we might decide to go the other way,” he said. “Everything’s open. We have to be flexible.”
No matter what, Lacob wants to make sure that the Warriors are not a lottery team. He’s more positive than some fans for success in the next year or two.
“I can just tell you that the goal is to not be a lottery team ever. The goal is to be competitive,” he said. “The goal is to win. And, ideally, if it’s possible, to win championships or compete for championships.”