Will Buddy Hield remain a Warrior?
[salary cap stuff]
Less than one hour to go with the NBA trade deadline and I literally passed out at 2am whilst transcribing the Steve Kerr postgame last night, then woke up at 10am to continue on with Stephen Curry and Kevon Looney postgame (I’ll post the videos and transcripts on this site later, but they’re already on YouTube), so this is a super-11th-hour post.
Also, I might miss something while I type this. Maybe even if something happens, the steps below will help increase knowledge out there in DubNation.
But the Warriors only have 11 roster spots filled and are presently $1.4 million under the hard cap of the first apron. This is based on information from Capsheets.com by capologist Yossi Gozlan.
With three spots to fill and our very rough calculation that a pro-rated veteran’s minimum contract right now for a rookie — say, converting Quinten Post, Pat Spencer and Jackson Rowe all from each a two-way contract (I don’t think Rowe will be converted, see below) — just hypothetically the cheapest of all contracts you could do to fill those last three spots would cost about $450k each, again, pro-rated. These are back-of-the-napkin calculations. So, they could be slightly off.
Those three rookie pro-rated contracts would take you to $1,354,715, which is barely squeezed into that $1.4 million space below the hard cap.
We discussed this last night, although my calculations were off — I reversed the proration math, my bad:
So, either they go with three rookies or they trade out Hield for, say, Svi Mihailyuk, who played really well against the Warriors last night. Mihailyuk only makes $3.5 million, so you’d be well under the first apron hard cap at that point. But idk if Danny Ainge would want a second-rounder or something. Hope not.
The reason why I think it’d be Buddy being traded out and not Gary Payton II or Looney is because GP2 and Loon come off the books this summer, anyways. Hield’s contract, you’re committed to that money for another two years beyond this season.
Dean “of Positivity” Chambers also has a fun scenario where the Warriors land the low contracts of Seth Curry and Taj Gibson (a Draymond Green fav) from Chicago for Hield.
Unfortunately this season so far, through 50 games, we only got about 15-20 games of “Mo Fiyah”, but those of us on the YouTube livestreams will remember him fondly and, until more fun behind-the-scenes stuff pops up, perhaps inevitably with a personality like Jimmy Butler, Buddy will remain in the clips of our game-by-game outros:
🫶💙💛
Chris Haynes just reported that GSW will be aggressive in buyout market.
So, looking forward to learning how they’ll squeeze this under the first apron hard cap.
Every year you learn a little more through experience. Can’t wait to see what the parameters are for buyouts. Regular vet min based on years of exp, right? Maybe theyll sign them late enough in the season such that prorating contracts squeezes them in? Juggle 10-day contracts for a minute?
Oops I never mentioned Vucevic which we mentioned a ton on the live last night. The salary combinations of Buddy, GP and Loon don’t add up enough to Vooch’s $20 million, unless you’re trading out Podz or TJD in addition (for example it would never be Loon AND Trayce, losing two centers who we value like that, and then also, you kinda need GP’s POA defense going forward). Of course Chicago wants multiple second-rounders in this, there is no desire to obtain Buddy, GP or Loon as the basis of a trade, for them. But the issue is mainly with the math of the salaries. Unless I missed something.