How The Golden State Gold Rush Dries Up

The NBA is a league in which a single star player can thrust a sub-par team to the playoffs. So a team with four all-stars and above average bench players not only thrusts a team into the playoffs, but at the very least, takes their team to the conference finals. The latter are the Golden State Warriors.

So then how does a team that seems perfect, fail? The easiest answers would be injury or retirement. However, the former typically does not destroy a dynasty, unless the injury is career ending or is chronic (for instance Derek Rose has never been the same since his knee injuries, even though he is still in the league), and retirement is usually foreseeable in professional sports. Also most dynasties occur when the team’s players are not nearing retirement (Michael Jordan retiring from the Bulls for the final time).  In turn, a dynasty, like the Mayans, fails from within.

Now the question becomes: How do the Golden State Warriors collapse from within?  In the simplest terms it comes down to the fact that good players, all-star players, want to win, but also want to be paid adequately. In 2017 Kevin Durant, the Warriors’ forward who was courted from Oklahoma City in order to stop Lebron and the Cavs, took a pay cut. Typically a player of his caliber should receive the max salary (~$35M per year), but Durant took about a ten million dollar pay cut, in which he netted $25M. Dan Feldman, from NBCsports.com, stated that Durant’s pay cut allowed for, “the Warriors to keep Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston.” However, Durant could have been paid $31M and the Warriors could still have kept Iguodala and Livingston. Feldman then mentions that the Warriors were able to sign the shooter Nick Young, with the cash saved from Durant’s pay cut. If the Warriors’ really needed Nick Young so badly that they asked Durant to take a pay cut, it seems like a slap in the face to Durant. It should be noted the addition of Nick Young was not crucial to the Warriors’ continued success. Nonetheless Durant’s pay cut is just the foreshadowing of the demise.

Steph Curry, the overrated point guard for the Warriors, is scheduled to receive a “super max” contract worth $201M through 2022. Then Klay Thompson, who is the best all-around player on the Warriors, will become a free agent in the summer of 2019. Thompson’s current contract is scheduled to be worth $68M, so it is likely that, due to his caliber and talent, that he will likely not only like to see a monetary raise to compensate his value, but also to be paid like a super star. Then in the summer of 2020, Draymond Green’s current contract, which is scheduled to be worth $82M, expires. Here,  Green will have the same dilemma as Thompson. Golden State’s ownership will have to decide whether they adequately compensate their players, and in doing so, the ownership will have to pay the tax for being over the soft cap. In other words, the ownership would be losing money.  The other option is that the ownership tries to have Durant, who will be a free agent in the summer of 2018, take another pay cut. This option seems unlikely as Feldman has stated that Durant has implied he does not think taking another pay cut would be smart.

There seems to be two options available. The first is that the Golden State Warriors’ ownership uses Durant’s willingness to take a pay cut as precedent for the rest of the team to do the same when their current contract terms expire. The issue with this is that players will only be getting older and so their bargaining power, after they take their initial “pay cut”, becomes lower. The other option is that Golden State trade one of these players – namely Green or Thompson – in the last year of their current contract. This is highly unlikely for Thompson; the reason for this is because he will just be 28 when his current contract expires, and will also be in his prime. The more likely scenario is Draymond Green is not resigned or is traded in his last year of his contract, if he is not willing to take a pay cut. Green would be about 30 or 31 when his contract expires. However, Green is not physically gifted like other all-stars and so when he reaches his 30’s his abilities may be dissipating, rather than improving, or at the very least staying the same.

In the end the Golden State Warriors’ dynasty may collapse due to cash, as stated above.  But if the team decides to all take pay cuts or the ownership pays the tax, there is one inevitable way the dynasty ends – time. A player’s physical talent is finite, and as a player ages, his abilities deteriorate, and with that, so does his value to his team.