ESPN’s Zach Lowe published a lengthy story Tuesday detailing the inner workings of the Warriors braintrust that led to the franchise-altering Andrew Wiggins trade.
Wiggins has become a key contributor for the Warriors in his two years at Golden State while D’Angelo Russell has become part of an exciting young core for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Wiggins has also become the fourth max contract player on the Warriors behind dynasty cornerstones Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
According to Lowe, teams around the NBA aren’t happy with Golden State's seeming disregard for the luxury tax penalties on player salaries. For every dollar that the Warriors spend over $136.6 million, they get dinged on luxury tax that escalates as you spend more.
“The Warriors are paying a league-record $346 million in salary and tax this season,” Lowe wrote, “and rivals are already grumbling about Golden State's competitive spending advantage, sources say.”
Warriors president of basketball operations/general manager Bob Myers joined 95.7 The Game’s “The Morning Roast” for his bi-weekly appearance Tuesday to discuss the NBA Finals and more. Myers takes issue with any critics of the franchise’s exorbitant spending.
"You should be allowed to spend on your own players,” Myers said. “We drafted a lot of these guys, we developed them. It's not like we went out and signed all these guys as free agents and built some team that way. Larry Riley drafted Curry. I was here when we drafted Klay, we Draymond. We drafted (Jordan) Poole. We traded for Wiggins. Nobody wanted Wiggins. Nobody was saying anything then.”
As host Joe Shasky noted, there weren’t as many “grumblings” when the highly-paid Warriors stumbled to a 15-50 record during the 2019-20 season.
If the Warriors want to keep the gang together, the bill is only going to go up. According to Lowe, Golden State’s payroll and tax bill could hit $475 million considering Kevon Looney and Gary Payton II are set to hit free agency this summer, and Poole’s rookie deal and Wiggins’ current contract expire following the 2022-23 season.
It doesn’t hurt that the team is making an expected eight-figure payday off its 2022 Finals run while hosting at least three home games in each of the four playoff rounds. Still, nearly half a billion dollars on one year of payroll seems extravagant.
Myers also snuck in an interesting talking point, arguing that perhaps there shouldn’t be a luxury tax imposed on homegrown players.
“My response to a lot of that is, if you draft your own guys and develop them you should be able to pay those guys and potentially not even a tax,” Myers said.
Golden State has made some shrewd picks, as none of the team’s drafted-and-developed players were selected in the top five: Curry (No. 7 overall pick), Thompson (No. 11), Green (No. 35), Poole (No. 28). Andrew Wiggins was a No. 1 overall pick in 2014, but the Warriors took a flier on him out of Minnesota.
For Myers, he doesn’t feel like the Warriors should be penalized for committing to their draftees long-term.
“Everybody’s got an equal playing field in the draft,” Myers said. “Everybody drafts unless you trade your pick. It’s an opportunity where it’s not about big or small markets. It’s about how well you do with that. And then it’s about development. I could hear it a little bit more maybe where it was some sort of situation where we just signed all these guys in free agency or something like that. But these are our guys. We’ve rode it out with them.
“When we had the worst record in the league, we had a lot of the same guys. You know what? Fine. We just gotta go play the game and try to win this.”
