Why Jimmy Butler will make $121M: Bro code AND cap sheet don’t lie!

[analysis/commentary sequel]

I’ve seen complaints all over Elon’s app that Mike Dunleavy, Jr. screwed up and made a huge mistake by giving Jimmy Butler the two-year $121 million extension.

[Photo: Trainer Adam Harrington shows his sons playing at Jimmy’s house in SoCal, then taking them back-to-school shopping.]

It’s sort of hard to explain because it’s just second nature if you’ve been in enough basketball gyms and seen enough hoop dynamics while recruiting players and building teams. And so whenever I try to explain it, I probably come off sounding like a jerk because it’s just so obvious to me. For example, here was my response in the Comments in the last post:

What I'm saying is, you have to respect negotiations. You cannot expect Jimmy Butler to act like a robot. Same with Dunleavy. It's human negotations with deep human understanding that "for me to come to the Warriors, bro, Mike, my Bulls teammate, you KNOW I need that extension" and Mike goes, "Yep, I know and I know it's a gamble for us, it hogs up our salary cap and I'm willing to make the deal and take responsibility for it." Voila, 25-7, get into the playoffs, make a run -- ended by injury to a GOAT. NOTHING. TO. BE. MAD. ABOUT. Lol

I think a lot of it is just “bro code”, but I’ll come back to this.

Let’s take a step back and analyze the cap sheet one more time because (again, trademark this)…

CAP. SHEET. DON’T. LIE.™️

Here is the goal from the mathematical perspective of the cap sheet: Figure out what was the maximum to be paid to Butler at that February deadline such that Dunleavy would have given himself more optionality this off-season.

The only real optionality that’s different than the one they’re currently in would be getting below the luxury tax line, which as I mentioned in the Jonathan Kuminga article the other day, opens up the ability to use the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception (NTMLE) at $14.1 million as well as the Bi-Annual Exception at $5.1 million, to grab a couple free agents, maybe, so long as the team stays under the First Apron.

The top tier of these free agents at the “mid-level” were guys like Nickeil Alexander-Walker (NAW) or Dorian Finney-Smith (DFS). NAW got re-signed by Minnesota — good for them and that effort effectively took Alexander-Walker off the market.

By the way, Sacramento interestingly utilized a sign-and-trade with Detroit to nab Dennis Schroder for a salary equal to the NTMLE, so Schroder was technically also on the market at the mid-level, but obviously would not have been on GSW’s radar this summer due to the mutually failed stint with the Dubs after De’Anthony Melton got hurt.

If there are any other interesting mid-level free agents I missed, let me know in the Comments below, but I think pretending we would have been pursuing Finney-Smith will suffice.

In the spreadsheet below via Yossi Gozlan’s Capsheets.com, with nine players under contract, let’s conservatively fill out the remaining six roster slots with Kuminga, the 11th through 13th slots at acceptable cap hit values of a veteran’s minimum — counted as a second-year player, as explained in the previous post — with the 14th slot as a rookie minimum (Will Richard, for example), and the 15th spot open.

Quite frankly, doing this calculation back in February with one of the slots at a rookie minimum, which is about a million dollars less than a typical vet min, is a generous way of inflating the maximum contract for Butler in order to achieve more roster optionality. I mean, we had the 52nd pick at the time, but to expect that pick to sign a rookie minimum off the bat instead of a two-way is a little unfair, but oh well, let’s do it.

So we’ll get under the tax line and then use part of the NTMLE to sign Horford and place him in the 11th spot. You’ll see from the numbers below that it actually doesn’t make sense to pursue a guy like Horford if you have the NTMLE available, unless he can be had at the vet min and not use the NTMLE.

So you’d be going after DFS, essentially, in lieu of Horford. But did the Warriors have any chance of landing DFS versus Houston? That’s clearly debatable. Let’s hope these logical steps make sense to you as we go through this exercise.

One problem is, JK’s spot is a bit of a variable, as in, at what value do we place his roster slot in this exercise?

Obviously, in the universe that we live in where Jimmy got his fat extension, Anthony Slater of ESPN has already reported the Warriors’ offer of $45 million over two years ($22.5 million AAV). So how about let’s agree that we can plug in JK at $22.5 million in this other universe where Jimmy did not get paid the $121M extension — that’s a fair assumption, right?

You cannot picture yourself in February, for example, going into this calculation assuming JK crazily takes the $7.9 million qualifying offer as discussed in the last article. Therefore, the $22.5 million figure of Kuminga is indeed a fair value if we go back to February and we’re negotiating with Jimmy to come to Golden State.

Okay, well, if you do the math, you see that to get to exactly the luxury tax line, Jimmy’s first-year salary on his extension would have had to be no more than… 🥁

$40,853,355.

…again, with Kuminga at $22.5 million and the aforementioned numbers for slots 11 through 15. Here’s the cap sheet analysis:

Let’s say you wanted to use the NTMLE to sign Horford and not some other free agent and not singularly DFS because you found out he’d rather go to Houston, period. There’s only about $10-ish million left to sign Horford and some other guy, by the way, so if you gave Horford the same value of the Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception (TPMLE) of $5.8 million, you’d have only about $4.2 million to spend on another free agent and stay under the First Apron, as required by usage of the NTMLE.

A vet min for a player with 10 years of experience is $3.6 million per SpoTrac, which is only $600k below that $4.2 million left to spend, so there aren’t really any appealing free agents when you have so little remaining to spend. You’d have to clear out some additional space.

To clear out some additional space, you’d have to trade out a guy like Moses Moody or Buddy Hield to really make a difference and go out and pursue someone else at the NAW/DFS/Schroder tier or below that. Trading out Brandin Podziemski, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Gui Santos, or Quinten Post isn’t worth the effort because their salaries are so relatively small.

This is equivalent to saying the following: to pursue Finney-Smith at the full mid-level, Dunleavy would have had to not only force a Jimmy pay cut, but also traded out Moody or Hield. Getting the tax line only allows you to pursue a free agent with about $10 million available under the First Apron.

Or add another $4 million to Jimmy’s pay cut in order to have the full mid-level available to pursue DFS. That would mean a $36 million contract for Butler.

I hope you can already see why cutting Jimmy’s salary just to get to the tax line didn’t make a whole of sense based on who was available at the mid-level and having to move Moody or Hield in the process if you wanted a guy like Finney-Smith.

And if you’re not pursuing that tier and just looking to outbid everyone for Horford, well, you can pay him up to $10-ish million if you get down to the tax line or forget that, just be over the tax while under the Second Apron and get him like we’re getting him at the TPMLE. There is no need to pay Horford $10 million when he’d be happy with $5.8 million.

So… whatever, let’s say we are simply dead set on getting some magical free agent out here for that $10 million of space under the First Apron, while keeping Moses and Buddy, plus ducking under the tax to do so. Would that have even been humanly possible, to have had Jimmy agree to an $8-ish million pay cut last February?

Put yourself in Jimmy’s shoes. Would you have done that or would you have just said, Nah, I’ll sit out the rest of the season as a Miami Heat player at my house near San Diego, work out every day with Harrington, and test the open market in the summer, peace out?

Sometimes I think the perturbed fans (a) don’t actually do the math, and/or (b) treat the NBA like a video game. This isn’t using your joystick to select $40 million as your offer to Butler and the Sony PS5 going off to process it in some trade machine subroutine and spitting out an answer.

And I mentioned above, we pegged the 14th spot as a rookie minimum. Had that been a vet min, Jimmy’s figure actually comes out to less than $40 million. How would it look to him, aesthetically? How would that look to the 449 other NBA players, for Dunleavy to have demanded Butler take a deal that was less than $40 million? Like, “$39 million” written down on a piece of paper after making $54 million — is there a word for reverse sticker shock?

There are humans involved here. There is this thing called ego. There is this thing called respect. There is this thing called, “You’re the desperate animal. You’re the one who’s win-loss record is 25-26 approaching the All-Star Break. Act like it.”

There is no human being on the planet that could ever hold the title of General Manager of an NBA team — a real one, not one inside a PS5 box — if he thought he could stand before Jimmy Butler in February and say, “Here’s what we will do. We, at one game under .500, will rescue you from Miami and then your 2025-26 salary will be $40 million because we need to use the NTMLE. In fact, if you’d be so kind as to accept $36 million, we can probably go out and try to get DFS, which we wouldn’t be able to do if you sign that $121 million extension you’re expecting. Sound good?”

🤦🏻‍♂️

$40 million is also a 16.7% pay cut. Nobody agrees to take a 16.7% pay cut to stay employed by the same employer — okay, maybe one Wardell Stephen Curry might actually do that in Summer 2027, we’ll see and we’ll get there, but…

Again: CAP. SHEET. DON’T. LIE.™️

I’ve heard people say, “Mike should’ve paid Jimmy $40 million because that’s Jimmy’s market value” (again, not picking on the previous commenter because I’ve literally seen this multiple times on Twitter this summer).

$40 million is slapping Jimmy in the face. He’s never taking that.

Look, I’m open to level-headed suggestions. If I made a mistake in the spreadsheet above, in any of the assumptions, let me know. We’ll pivot and correct all the numbers in the Comments below. I’ll apologize if it makes you feel better. If I left something out, let me know. But try to be kind understand my intent here. But let me know. I’m here to help. Really.

Finally, I’d like to add an important element to all these numbers: Bro code don’t lie.™️

Allow me to explain “bro code” with a real-life personal example. I’ve mentioned his name on here a few times and I’ve even done a feature on him on GoldenStateOfMind (Google it!), but about 15+ years ago I recruited Josh Urbiztondo to play on my Asian team that I was taking to enter the Dream League New York Asian-American tournament. Brian Yang, thank you for that awesome work in putting that together.

We were lucky here in the Bay Area that my buddy Sunny Margate, who had a stint in the lower pro level PBL in the Philippines, had such vast connections that he knew Urbiztondo, who later became known as “Fireball” in the PBA, was available before the PBA Draft and hanging out back home in San Mateo after garduating.

So, really, Sunny recruited Josh. And I had recruited Sunny. Big thank you to Torrent Lee for the connection to Margate. Give credit where credit is due.

Urbiztondo had played locally in college at Notre Dame de Namur and, in those days, any Asian kid that actually played meaningful minutes even at a D-II college, would probably be a star in the Asian leagues and tournaments. And if that kid happened to be of Filipino descent, he could probably get drafted by the PBA — Josh actually ended up undrafted and was pissed about that because there were politics involved, but he still went on to have a storied career in the Philippines’ famous top league.

But here’s the stuff that everybody forgets. Yeah, I took a team to New York and stacked it with guys like Margate and Urbiztondo. Yang also had his Asian superstar, Nic Echevestre who also played D-II somewhere in SoCal, playing on Brian’s host NYC squad because Echevestre happened to be going to law school at Columbia U. at the time.

Again, thanks to Margate knowing every high-level Filipino baller in the Bay, we got Jojo Pierce and TJ Hawkins of the locally famous Stockton Ballers Fil-Am squad to hop on our team — wait, how are we getting to New York City? 🥴

You see, part of allure of the trip for Pierce and Hawkins going with us (and my guys Mike Reding, Taraz Lee and Barry Lee — Barry is Torrent’s little brother) was the fact that Sunny had picked up a unicorn in Josh — not to mention this was a pretty prestigious tournament and, well, New York! Who says no?

And so, yeah, I picked up the tab for Urbiztondo and Margate. It was me who paid for their flights on Virgin America and the hotel room at the Sheraton for those two. I never even asked Josh or Sunny to pay.

The rest of the guys, iirc they paid their own way although I got the rental van (and got lost multiple times using a Garmin GPS that I’d bought lol). It was also unspoken that all the guys would buy their own food, although I did splurge after we won the championship and told them I got you — I guess I got to feel like Joe Lacob one time lol! — when we chose the fancy BBQ place in Manhattan before the early morning flight home.

Reding and Taraz were broke graduate students during those times, while Jojo, TJ and Barry had jobs, but nothing spectacular. They paid their own way and we didn’t need to talk about that, either. But I always spotted them every tournament entry fee. Guys, if you’re reading this, at least subscribe to this Substack, you goons! Lol.

It’s just the “bro code”, man.

Idk how else to describe it. It’s like that nod, even though really you don’t even need to nod. It’s just known. All the guys outside of Sunny and Josh, they knew, too. No words needed to be said.

There’s a pecking order in basketball.

So, like, people clamoring that Dunleavy could have somehow negotiated Jimmy’s salary lower than $121m/2y? Idk what to tell ya.

It’s like if we’d gotten back to the Bay after that NYC championship and I came up to Josh and said, “Oh, uh, yeah, so can you pay me back $80 of that $480 round-trip flight? Because, you know, one of our fans who rooted for us from afar to win this thing, they were like, ‘Josh, we like you, but you should have to give a little bit back just to be fair and so that Rich can use the money on the airfare of a new guy at the next tourney.’”

Huh?!?!

Look, I don’t mean to throw [Commenter] under the bus. That’s not my goal. I’ve really tried to stay away from all the zero-sum cat fights that dominate the landscape of thumb-typing complaint apps like Twitter — and, apparently, this website.

This here explanation is about as polite as I can do it and I truly literally have seen Dunleavy and/or Lacob thrown under the bus multiple times this summer because Jimmy is making $54 million this year.

And the cap sheet work above says this much: If Butler were to have made more than $40,853,355, it would not make a difference in terms of roster optionality. $54 million is the same roster optionality as $40,853,356.

And the bonus I gave to you was that Dunleavy would have had to move Moody or Hield just to get into the market for DFS.

But I think a vast majority of people who thumb-type complaints onto an app, they’re already in survival mode due to some other personal situation. It can be as seemingly trivial as a dude hating his co-worker because of some past disagreement, but also having to walk by his cubicle every morning, every Monday through Friday.

That’s just one of a potentially myriad of examples that’s got a guy in fight-or-flight mode.

Actually, there’s really no such thing as “flight” in this era of social media, so it’s always just “fight” — before the dude even looks at his phone to read a single tweet! That is the root cause for the constant complaining once he hops on to that app.

Oh, this summer is JK’s fault, Jimmy’s overpaid, Mike sucks as a GM, Joe is a clown owner, all of these hateful thoughts are collateral damage by a social media generation buried in constant stress and/or competition.

But at the same time, I do have a little compassion for people going through something and projecting it onto social media. They’re basically trapped. If you’re bitter about something or someone, I guarantee you you’re caught in a loop.

People caught in a loop are separated from love, creativity, and learning. From gratitude, appreciation, mindfulness, empathy and respect.

You can’t feel those wonderful feelings when you’re in survival mode. And I can offer all the help that I can, write these words over and over, go through dal sheet analysis after cap sheet analysis, but usually they are not in the mindset to be receptive to change.

All I really ask is that Warriors fans, kindly be a little bit more conscious of this and at least try to lay down your sword. Remember, you’re supposed to love this game. You’re probably able to do this on birthdays and Christmas, anyways. Think about it. Is anybody going on Twitter and complaining about the Warriors on their birthday or Christmas? No. You’re going out of your way to be happy on those days. You won’t let anyone or anything stop you from loving life on those two days of the calendar.

So it can be done.

Don’t let anyone or anything stop you from learning more about cap sheets, bro code, and just rooting for your team again.

It takes a force of will to tell your brain to come out of it and just breathe.

Lay down the sword, please.

We’ll continue to go about it as high-vibrationally as we can here at LGW. One thing I won’t stop doing is trying. Which is why I wrote this post. And am leaving it without a paywall.

🫶💙💛