Reporters showed up at Chase Center on Friday hoping to hear from the Warriors about the four-team trade that essentially landed the team Gary Payton II for James Wiseman.
Payton was seen happily bouncing around the Warriors weight room with his teammates and staff, but president/GM Bob Myers’ session with the media was called off. Coach Steve Kerr deflected any inquiries, too, so you had a feeling things could be happening behind the scenes.
Later in the afternoon, Anthony Slater of The Athletic reported with Shams Charania that Payton failed a physical due to a core muscle injury that could sideline him up to three months. Slater joined 95.7 The Game’s “Damon & Ratto” to give more context to the developing situation, as the entire four-team trade is on the rocks.
“The Warriors have been pretty upset today about the situation, the negotiations with Portland and how this all went down,” Slater said. “They’re trying to figure out what they’re path forward is. They made this deal because they wanted a ‘win-now’ player. They’re ‘win-now’ player cannot play now and they didn’t know that before the deal.”
Per Slater, the Blazers didn't make the Warriors aware of Payton’s current injury, which required offseason surgery last year. Payton made his season debut on Jan. 2 and has appeared in 14 of the Blazers past 17 games, including a 22 minutes against the Warriors on Wednesday. He was playing through the pain with the aid of Toradol shots, according to Slater.
So, how do the Blazers let Payton play, when the Warriors think he should be out?
“They’re different people, different staffs, different thresholds I guess you would say,” Slater said. “(Warriors director of sports medicine and performance) Rick Celebrini is noted to be, not careful, but thorough with his players. We’ve seen that over the past couple seasons. From my understanding, they don’t think this is an injury he should be playing through and that there needs to be some type of rehab process that puts him in jeopardy to miss the season.”
Slater said he believes the Warriors have until noon on Saturday to make up their minds. Payton is expected to undergo further X-rays Friday night, according to Jason Dumas of KRON4.
If the Warriors indeed nix the deal, they would reportedly take on $7 million in additional salary/taxes this year and $30 million next year. Not to mention the wholly awkward process of welcoming back Wiseman to the organization after trying to trade him away to the Detroit Pistons. In the deal, Saddiq Bey would be going to the Atlanta Hawks and Kevin Knox would be going to Portland.
“There’s a lot of things that would make undoing this deal pretty awkward,” Slater said. “If they decide they’re best course of action is to rescind the deal, it’d be awkward. But sports are sports. You get paid what you get paid. It could happen. It’s post-deadline so there would be an awkwardness to it. But if it has to happen, it has to happen.”
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