Dray's comments to Thompson and Slater may have hurt his future revenue as a businessman. Hard to trust someone to be a VC partner or a media personality with his statements wrt playing for LeBron on a vet min if he doesn't get a max from the Warriors. There has to be some info we aren't privy to -- maybe a lowering of his minutes for next season, or a discussion if he has to transition to a lower salary like how Andre transitioned from full time to a bench player.
2: Whatever they pay JP, it should be less than Loon, but I don't know how he much gets now so ...
I found the numbers for Kevon, JP, and the under-22 crew. This list includes a 3X Champion, who played every game this year, had his best season ever, he hit 63.6% from the field in the post season, he's 25 and still learning. That man is SECOND, and this is a NEW contract!
(sorry about the table formatting. Widening the browser doesn't help)
Continuing all the luxury tax (and hard cap) saga -- my optimistic take is that it is in many teams' (and players) interests to make it easier to keep your own players.
Right now luxury tax is way too painful, and it makes it way too hard to build good teams. The end result of the current taxes are:
1) Once you sign and develop 1-2 big players, it becomes waaay hard (e.g. hard cap, can't acquire more players) and expensive (tax) to fill out the rest of your team with competent players.
2) high-level role players have their salaries depressed (Draymond, Mikal Bridges)
3) and everybody else is basically only playing for peanuts, because teams are capped out (Looney)
4) most teams get stuck in purgatory signing a good but insufficient player (e.g. Gobert) to build around, or in the worst case, a John Wall or Bradley Beal to a max.
5) a painful luxury tax might break up a super team... but the spoils ... just go to really rich super teams (Clippers, Nets) who will credibly gamble on going deep into luxury to get enough role players to win a championship. Losing teams keep losing.
6) Small market teams have to rely on a lot of home grown talent (e.g. Grizz), but again they're kind of on a clock. The window of contention is only a few years before you extend everyone to maxes (or you have Steph on way-below-market rate). Oftentimes once you start extending you've kind of plateaued and have to start breaking the team up. (E.g. Bucks with PJ, Warriors with GPII).
If the concerns are that players don't have enough mobility, there are other ways to remedy that than luxury tax. If players want to stay (eg for family, community) that needs to be easier, too!
The right way to ensure a good competitive product is to make it more feasible and less risky to put good teams together. Young players may feel stuck on a team if e.g. the cap makes it impossible to build a good team around them. Chasing league parity by making everyone worse just means worse basketball.
It is perfectly reasonable for Draymond to think he's worth a max extension and say so. It's perfectly reasonable for Joe Lacob to say the team has limits to the amount of luxury tax it can pay. While it's Bob Myers' problem, it is also a problem for the players, because the "golden goose" for a player is being on a winning team. Winning delivers endorsements (worth a lot), bonuses and non-trivial immediate and long-term psychic rewards. Losing sucks.
I don' t think the Warriors key players are idiots. They understand that their contracts constrain how much Lacob/Myers can pay and still retain promising youngsters (and Wiggins). Seeking to maximize personal gain jeopardizes long-term organizational success and player satisfaction.
So what's a player and what is a team to do? Simple. Try to defeat the stupid luxury tax by finding loopholes and ways to game the system (find ways to provide equivalent compensation without paying them through taxable means). If that fails, then the Big 3 need to work it out with Bob Myers.
Frankly, if I'm the Big 3, I would value team success and staying together over filthy lucre. Can you imagine maximizing your individual pay, but playing for a loser? Nope. Me neither.
Watching some of the video embedded above. Astonishing how much has changed in just a few years. This was 2015. Things that are different: 1. The Warriors offense has not yet become what we now see, lots of action around the three point line to hunt threes. It's still a lot of old school basketball: feed the post (often Bogut), Klay and Steph hunting midrange shots. Also players who pass don't go to set picks nearly as often. There are some signs of the newer Warriors, but the vestiges of the old are striking. 2. Houston is even more the old way. They've got McHale coaching, not D'Antoni yet. There's a lot of dumping it in to Dwight or to Josh Smith, or if not dumping, they are hanging around to get rebounds off Harden drives (and, D'Antoni would say, getting in the way). 3. Draymond's passing and playmaking has not been fully weaponized. Steph brings the ball up, not Draymond, at least in the first quarter. 4. SO FEW THREES. I keep thinking we are going to see a three but usually a drive is a drive, not a drive and kick. The three is there (Steph's got 4 already) but it's not the primary focus. As a consequence 5. No one is doubling Steph at the three point line!!! Whaaaat?? (Also, as a consequence of a more crowded paint, several bad Steph turnovers on passes forced inside. His judgment has gotten way better.)
It was sad to see GP2 & OPJ move on, but I believe there was a bigger game afoot. We don't just need to manage a roster, salary cap, etc. Outside of the building, Joe Lacob has to maintain relationships with the rest of the league, i.e., owners, Adam Silver and the Player's Union. No one can argue the organic way in which the Dubs were put together. In addition, no one can argue that the Dubs broke records with their total salary. But there is new TV money and a new CBA on the horizon, and this is the real game and the Warriors are smack in the middle of it.
There is a lot of media support for changing the rules around the Luxury Tax, specifically as it impacts players that a team drafted. Kellerman, Lowe, Cowherd and more will likely keep this topic alive, while others will keep up the checkbook banter just to make their shows spicy.
The Player's Union will likely get behind any rules that create higher income for its members. Luxury Tax penalties get distributed to other non-tax paying owners, while they are still considered "Salary". If an owner is willing to pay 'x' amount for total Salary + Luxury Tax Penalties, I am sure they, and the players, would rather that money go to the players instead. On the flip side, an attempt to make it easier for teams to keep their own players may come across as making it harder for free agents to move where they like or limit their freedom by penalizing teams more for acquiring them, should they go over the cap.
Small and medium size markets would benefit greatly from anything that could help them keep their star players. More players may choose the Lillard route were it easier on owners in those markets to pay them market value. Particularly when a player is in the final lap of their career. However, these teams don't like getting their asses kicked by the Warriors and non-tax paying owners receive fat checks from tax-paying teams. The success of the Warriors has probably generated billions of equity for league owners, but no one is sending Joe Lacob flowers for it. These are relationships. There is jealousy, envy, dislike, indignation, greed and a whole host of other emotions that seep into these collective bargaining agreements. Joe may be right, but he can't just steamroll the other owners.
From Adam Silver's perspective, he wants to produce a good product and there has to be rules that maintain some parity and sharing of Player Assets in the league.
Viewed from high above, we let GP2 and OPJ go because "we can't afford them." Joe Lacob talks about the Luxury Tax and Adam Silver fines him $500,000. I thought this was a lot until I realized what these actions are. This is Joe saying that we want to work within the rules, but the rules cannot penalize teams for keeping their own players. And it is Adam Silver replying, saying," yeah, I here you, but I gotta fine you half a mil 'cuz you just won the championship and I have 29 other owners in the waiting room in a bad mood. I can't look soft."
Whether he is being 'just Draymond' or 'holy shit 3rd dimension wind walker Dray', he seems to be joining the conversation as well and relaying the player's perspective. "I played, I won, I earned it.
But now the team I have played with for over a decade can't pay me because of taxes that are going to other owners? F That."
The upcoming CBA could extend a dynasty or cut it in half. The Warriors, and Lacob knows this, can't win the new CBA outright. There is going to have to be something sacrificed along the way, call it a sacrifice to the basketball Gods for all of our good fortune. I believe the league will do something that will end up helping the Warriors, but only in part. We are bargaining with a nation of 29 other tribes. Letting go of GP2 and OPJ was just the initial greeting. That's not what we are trading. That was just like the bottle of wine you bring over to a friend's house who is making dinner for you.
Will Poole or Wiggins be enough? I don't think Adam Silver wants to break up the core. It would be a victory for him to get through the next CBA and have the core retire together. Besides, if anyone went, it would probably be Green, and I think Adam is happy having him in GS because Curry keeps him from getting too far off the rails. But believe me, there will be a price to pay up front. We will benefit from it greatly in the long run, but no one in Blue & Gold is gonna like it.
It's chess not checkers. A sacrifice will be necessary. The Warriors must be wounded, bear blood in public, to seal the deal. They are negotiating terms as we speak, and Draymond, in his true Spirit Warrior form, may have offered himself up as the sacrifice. (let's face it, he's loving it)
Aaaaaaannnnd it's flooding in the STL again. Blah.
(We're fine, basement flooded again but not terrible. Moved the car into our neighbor's driveway because it was getting uncomfortably close to the floorboards).
My girlfriend curated this art show that is happening in Middletown for the next few months. It's the first contemporary indigenous-focused and indigenous-curated art show ever in Lake County, and this link allows you to walk through the whole thing. The only things it doesn't show are the full runs of what are showing on the two TV screens. Note: I did the wall lettering on the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women facts wall.
Well now, watched the first quarter of the posted game. Thank you! That game is a pure hit to the pleasure center of my brain. Bogut especially is fun to watch. Interestingly his passing is off in the first quarter (3 turnovers I think) but his positioning, rebounding, shooting, and defense are all a joy to watch. The lob - dunk from Draymond had me laughing out loud. I hope JW has watched this!
Moving this over from the previous thread because, freedom:
Getting angry at the players for asking for more money is akin to blaming the rising costs of a Big Mac on the fact that the burger flipper makes $15 an hour.
Yes, the sheer numbers are VERY different, but the concept is the same; the economic constraints in these situations come from owners unwilling to give up on their astronomical profit margins in order to compensate laborers at a higher rate.
Yes, Lacob has been amazing thus far as an owner, but he's still constrained by the CBA and what ALL the owners have collectively decided. Yes, most franchise owners don't make a huge amount off of their individual restaurants, but they're constrained by the ultimate McDonald's corporate directions.
It's easy to place outrage on the face of the business (e.g., the players, and the fast food workers), but ultimately this is an ownership issue, not a player issue.
Dray's comments to Thompson and Slater may have hurt his future revenue as a businessman. Hard to trust someone to be a VC partner or a media personality with his statements wrt playing for LeBron on a vet min if he doesn't get a max from the Warriors. There has to be some info we aren't privy to -- maybe a lowering of his minutes for next season, or a discussion if he has to transition to a lower salary like how Andre transitioned from full time to a bench player.
"JP should get the MAX" comes up. I think:
1: Pay Wiggs!
2: Whatever they pay JP, it should be less than Loon, but I don't know how he much gets now so ...
I found the numbers for Kevon, JP, and the under-22 crew. This list includes a 3X Champion, who played every game this year, had his best season ever, he hit 63.6% from the field in the post season, he's 25 and still learning. That man is SECOND, and this is a NEW contract!
(sorry about the table formatting. Widening the browser doesn't help)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wise: joined 2020, games: 39 (yes I know he couldn't help being hurt)
2022-23: $ 9,603,360 2023-24: $12,119,440 2024-25: __________
Kevon, PF/C: joined 2015, games: 367 + 64 in playoffs (was hurt, better now)
2022-23: $ 7,870,370 2023-24: $ 8,500,000 2024-25: $9,129,630
Kuminga, SF: joined 2021, games: 70 + 16 in playoffs
2022-23: $ 5,739,960 2023-24: $ 6,012,720 2024-25: $7,636,154
JP, SG: joined 2019, games: 184 + 22 in playoffs
2022-23: $ 3,901,399 2023-24: _____________ 2024-25: __________
MM, SG: joined 2021, games: 52 + 13 in playoffs
2022-23: $ 3,740,160 2023-24: $ 3,918.480 2024-25: 5,803,269
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contract info from https://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/GSW.html
JP deserves to be paid, but I still think Loon merits a bit more.
Continuing all the luxury tax (and hard cap) saga -- my optimistic take is that it is in many teams' (and players) interests to make it easier to keep your own players.
Right now luxury tax is way too painful, and it makes it way too hard to build good teams. The end result of the current taxes are:
1) Once you sign and develop 1-2 big players, it becomes waaay hard (e.g. hard cap, can't acquire more players) and expensive (tax) to fill out the rest of your team with competent players.
2) high-level role players have their salaries depressed (Draymond, Mikal Bridges)
3) and everybody else is basically only playing for peanuts, because teams are capped out (Looney)
4) most teams get stuck in purgatory signing a good but insufficient player (e.g. Gobert) to build around, or in the worst case, a John Wall or Bradley Beal to a max.
5) a painful luxury tax might break up a super team... but the spoils ... just go to really rich super teams (Clippers, Nets) who will credibly gamble on going deep into luxury to get enough role players to win a championship. Losing teams keep losing.
6) Small market teams have to rely on a lot of home grown talent (e.g. Grizz), but again they're kind of on a clock. The window of contention is only a few years before you extend everyone to maxes (or you have Steph on way-below-market rate). Oftentimes once you start extending you've kind of plateaued and have to start breaking the team up. (E.g. Bucks with PJ, Warriors with GPII).
If the concerns are that players don't have enough mobility, there are other ways to remedy that than luxury tax. If players want to stay (eg for family, community) that needs to be easier, too!
The right way to ensure a good competitive product is to make it more feasible and less risky to put good teams together. Young players may feel stuck on a team if e.g. the cap makes it impossible to build a good team around them. Chasing league parity by making everyone worse just means worse basketball.
It is perfectly reasonable for Draymond to think he's worth a max extension and say so. It's perfectly reasonable for Joe Lacob to say the team has limits to the amount of luxury tax it can pay. While it's Bob Myers' problem, it is also a problem for the players, because the "golden goose" for a player is being on a winning team. Winning delivers endorsements (worth a lot), bonuses and non-trivial immediate and long-term psychic rewards. Losing sucks.
I don' t think the Warriors key players are idiots. They understand that their contracts constrain how much Lacob/Myers can pay and still retain promising youngsters (and Wiggins). Seeking to maximize personal gain jeopardizes long-term organizational success and player satisfaction.
So what's a player and what is a team to do? Simple. Try to defeat the stupid luxury tax by finding loopholes and ways to game the system (find ways to provide equivalent compensation without paying them through taxable means). If that fails, then the Big 3 need to work it out with Bob Myers.
Frankly, if I'm the Big 3, I would value team success and staying together over filthy lucre. Can you imagine maximizing your individual pay, but playing for a loser? Nope. Me neither.
Watching some of the video embedded above. Astonishing how much has changed in just a few years. This was 2015. Things that are different: 1. The Warriors offense has not yet become what we now see, lots of action around the three point line to hunt threes. It's still a lot of old school basketball: feed the post (often Bogut), Klay and Steph hunting midrange shots. Also players who pass don't go to set picks nearly as often. There are some signs of the newer Warriors, but the vestiges of the old are striking. 2. Houston is even more the old way. They've got McHale coaching, not D'Antoni yet. There's a lot of dumping it in to Dwight or to Josh Smith, or if not dumping, they are hanging around to get rebounds off Harden drives (and, D'Antoni would say, getting in the way). 3. Draymond's passing and playmaking has not been fully weaponized. Steph brings the ball up, not Draymond, at least in the first quarter. 4. SO FEW THREES. I keep thinking we are going to see a three but usually a drive is a drive, not a drive and kick. The three is there (Steph's got 4 already) but it's not the primary focus. As a consequence 5. No one is doubling Steph at the three point line!!! Whaaaat?? (Also, as a consequence of a more crowded paint, several bad Steph turnovers on passes forced inside. His judgment has gotten way better.)
OK heading to second quarter hope we win.
EDIT: We won.
It was sad to see GP2 & OPJ move on, but I believe there was a bigger game afoot. We don't just need to manage a roster, salary cap, etc. Outside of the building, Joe Lacob has to maintain relationships with the rest of the league, i.e., owners, Adam Silver and the Player's Union. No one can argue the organic way in which the Dubs were put together. In addition, no one can argue that the Dubs broke records with their total salary. But there is new TV money and a new CBA on the horizon, and this is the real game and the Warriors are smack in the middle of it.
There is a lot of media support for changing the rules around the Luxury Tax, specifically as it impacts players that a team drafted. Kellerman, Lowe, Cowherd and more will likely keep this topic alive, while others will keep up the checkbook banter just to make their shows spicy.
The Player's Union will likely get behind any rules that create higher income for its members. Luxury Tax penalties get distributed to other non-tax paying owners, while they are still considered "Salary". If an owner is willing to pay 'x' amount for total Salary + Luxury Tax Penalties, I am sure they, and the players, would rather that money go to the players instead. On the flip side, an attempt to make it easier for teams to keep their own players may come across as making it harder for free agents to move where they like or limit their freedom by penalizing teams more for acquiring them, should they go over the cap.
Small and medium size markets would benefit greatly from anything that could help them keep their star players. More players may choose the Lillard route were it easier on owners in those markets to pay them market value. Particularly when a player is in the final lap of their career. However, these teams don't like getting their asses kicked by the Warriors and non-tax paying owners receive fat checks from tax-paying teams. The success of the Warriors has probably generated billions of equity for league owners, but no one is sending Joe Lacob flowers for it. These are relationships. There is jealousy, envy, dislike, indignation, greed and a whole host of other emotions that seep into these collective bargaining agreements. Joe may be right, but he can't just steamroll the other owners.
From Adam Silver's perspective, he wants to produce a good product and there has to be rules that maintain some parity and sharing of Player Assets in the league.
Viewed from high above, we let GP2 and OPJ go because "we can't afford them." Joe Lacob talks about the Luxury Tax and Adam Silver fines him $500,000. I thought this was a lot until I realized what these actions are. This is Joe saying that we want to work within the rules, but the rules cannot penalize teams for keeping their own players. And it is Adam Silver replying, saying," yeah, I here you, but I gotta fine you half a mil 'cuz you just won the championship and I have 29 other owners in the waiting room in a bad mood. I can't look soft."
Whether he is being 'just Draymond' or 'holy shit 3rd dimension wind walker Dray', he seems to be joining the conversation as well and relaying the player's perspective. "I played, I won, I earned it.
But now the team I have played with for over a decade can't pay me because of taxes that are going to other owners? F That."
The upcoming CBA could extend a dynasty or cut it in half. The Warriors, and Lacob knows this, can't win the new CBA outright. There is going to have to be something sacrificed along the way, call it a sacrifice to the basketball Gods for all of our good fortune. I believe the league will do something that will end up helping the Warriors, but only in part. We are bargaining with a nation of 29 other tribes. Letting go of GP2 and OPJ was just the initial greeting. That's not what we are trading. That was just like the bottle of wine you bring over to a friend's house who is making dinner for you.
Will Poole or Wiggins be enough? I don't think Adam Silver wants to break up the core. It would be a victory for him to get through the next CBA and have the core retire together. Besides, if anyone went, it would probably be Green, and I think Adam is happy having him in GS because Curry keeps him from getting too far off the rails. But believe me, there will be a price to pay up front. We will benefit from it greatly in the long run, but no one in Blue & Gold is gonna like it.
It's chess not checkers. A sacrifice will be necessary. The Warriors must be wounded, bear blood in public, to seal the deal. They are negotiating terms as we speak, and Draymond, in his true Spirit Warrior form, may have offered himself up as the sacrifice. (let's face it, he's loving it)
Ahhhhhhhhh, Chapter 2
Am I the only one here salivating over PBJ?
A 6'10 sharpshooter with a 7'3 wingspan that has excellent decisionmaking/body control/ball handling to go along with it?
I could easily see him being our Bjelica replacement this year as the stretch big who can pass while playing questionable defense.
So, here's a creampuff question for the Democratic National HQ.
Where do our players spend their offseasons? The reason I'm sort of curious is I wonder who is around to work with Poole and the Gang.
Steph seems to be here, or at a golf course within the 50 states.
Klay, maybe LA? I know that's where he had his Achilles, so I assume that's his offseason base.
Draymond: Here? Michigan? Barcelona?
Iguodala: Here, I assume, since he didn't even move when he was with the Heat.
No idea on anyone else.
Aaaaaaannnnd it's flooding in the STL again. Blah.
(We're fine, basement flooded again but not terrible. Moved the car into our neighbor's driveway because it was getting uncomfortably close to the floorboards).
Re-watching, noted after Steph made his first three:
> 31st straight playoff game with a made 3-pt FG
Crazy to think that streak would last another seven years and be extended a whopping 102 more games before ending this year.
My girlfriend curated this art show that is happening in Middletown for the next few months. It's the first contemporary indigenous-focused and indigenous-curated art show ever in Lake County, and this link allows you to walk through the whole thing. The only things it doesn't show are the full runs of what are showing on the two TV screens. Note: I did the wall lettering on the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women facts wall.
https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=fYApmFCx8GL&fbclid=IwAR01UinsYvz9Av5wS3DkcE1UrXCbD7HWNATbeow2dPuKtV-ayz8C6gqqDrs
Well now, watched the first quarter of the posted game. Thank you! That game is a pure hit to the pleasure center of my brain. Bogut especially is fun to watch. Interestingly his passing is off in the first quarter (3 turnovers I think) but his positioning, rebounding, shooting, and defense are all a joy to watch. The lob - dunk from Draymond had me laughing out loud. I hope JW has watched this!
I will not post Martha Stewart basketball hypotheticals until the second month of the offseason.
I will not post Martha Stewart basketball hypotheticals until the second month of the offseason.
I will not post Martha Stewart basketball hypotheticals until the second month of the offseason.
Moving this over from the previous thread because, freedom:
Getting angry at the players for asking for more money is akin to blaming the rising costs of a Big Mac on the fact that the burger flipper makes $15 an hour.
Yes, the sheer numbers are VERY different, but the concept is the same; the economic constraints in these situations come from owners unwilling to give up on their astronomical profit margins in order to compensate laborers at a higher rate.
Yes, Lacob has been amazing thus far as an owner, but he's still constrained by the CBA and what ALL the owners have collectively decided. Yes, most franchise owners don't make a huge amount off of their individual restaurants, but they're constrained by the ultimate McDonald's corporate directions.
It's easy to place outrage on the face of the business (e.g., the players, and the fast food workers), but ultimately this is an ownership issue, not a player issue.
Can we just fast forward to the part where actual basketball is being played? Lmao