Name: The Warriors’ path to Giannis is far less plausible than it was to Kevin Durant
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The Warriors’ path to Giannis is far less plausible than it was to Kevin Durant

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May 14, 2020When you pull off the improbable, people tend to believe you can do it again. Rise from the ashes for a title, dodge six pass rushers and throw an off-balance 40-yard dart for a touchdown, hire away a rival’s big-name employee — whatever the unlikely sports task, once completed, opponents gain greater fear and fans more confidence you can repeat it., entering the 2015 summer, and , entering the 2020 summer, have obvious parallels. Durant was 26. Giannis is 25. Durant was an all-time great reaching the front side of his prime just as he prepared for the final season of his contract. Giannis, once this current season ends (via cancellation or bubble playoffs), will be doing the same, unless he agrees to an extension with Milwaukee.You know Durant’s story. He played out that final season in Oklahoma City and left, signing with a franchise that, in the years prior, had laid a stealth path for his arrival. Nobody even publicly hinted at its possibility until the January prior and, even then, there was a general no effing way&nbsp;skepticism until the day it went down. It couldn’t. He&nbsp;wouldn’t.That legendary free-agent capture was a reputation-booster for the Warriors. It basically branded them as a permanent threat to steal away just about any name on the market. Remember when to the Warriors during the 2017-18 season? Do it once and you always loom.It’s why, four years after the Durant coup, this Giannis to the Warriors noise remains at an incessant murmur, despite how truly impractical it is in reality. This is nothing like the Durant situation. Those dominoes lined up perfectly. These dominoes, linking Giannis and the aged, expensive Warriors, have lined up terribly.Context matters. Let’s look at the three large-scope reasons why the two circumstances are so different and why any longshot pursuit for Giannis is far more difficult.Durant had turned 27 by the time he hosted his free-agency meetings in the Hamptons. Steph Curry, born five months before Durant, was 28. and were 26. It was a young, established core pitching a peer of a similar age. Come to us and let’s all plow through the league during our collective primes.&nbsp;That’s what drew Durant.If Giannis hits the market next summer, he will be 26. Curry — a friendly acquaintance, considered by those in the know as the dominant reason Giannis’ eyes would even tilt in the Warriors’ direction — will be 33. Thompson, currently in the late stages of his ACL rehab, and Green, showing early signs of a physical decline, will both be 31.Plus (as we’ll get to later), to afford Giannis, the Warriors would have to shed either one or both of Green and Thompson, along with basically any young asset of value. Is a 33-year-old Curry and a gutted roster below him that much of an appeal to Giannis as he enters the title-obsessed phase of his career, having already learned in Milwaukee the value of a deep rotation?That’s the undersold factor that damages all the Giannis to the Bay buzz, in my opinion, regardless of the logistical challenges we will get to in the following sections. Durant hopped on a juggernaut in motion. Giannis would be joining what’d probably become the early stages of a rebuild around him. Maybe a partnership with Curry is enough, if his belief is Steph will remain a top-tier star into his mid-to-late 30s. Not impossible, but a risky bet.In Durant’s first season with the Warriors, Curry was the 82nd highest-paid player in the . It was the final year of that signed back in 2012. He was on the books for only $12.1 million, slightly more than , slightly less than .It’s very beneficial when your best player is paid like a fringe starter. It’s also helpful when your second- and third-best players, both All-Stars, are under market value. Thompson earned $16.6 million that season. Green earned $15.3 million. Neither were among the 40 highest-paid players in the league.That (along with the cap spike, which we’ll discuss shortly) laid a pristine route for Durant’s $26.5 million contract to fit snugly under the cap restrictions. They’d only need to renounce ’ rights and trade ’s $11 million contract over to Dallas, simple maneuvers. There was no need for a sign-and-trade to make it happen.Circumstances would be quite different if Giannis reached free agency and wanted to sign with the Warriors. In the first season of what will be Giannis’ next contract, Curry is set to make $45.8 million, an NBA record (breaking the record he’ll set the season prior). Thompson is on the books for $37.9 million. Green is on the books for $24 million. Combined between the three: $107.8 million.Add in , making $31.6 million, and that’s $139.4 million combined between four players. The projected salary cap for that season, delivered before&nbsp;this financially-crushing pandemic hit, was $125 million.So, no, unlike Durant, there’s no way that Giannis (and his next max contract, projected to begin at $37.5 million) can sign with the Warriors outright. It’d have to be via sign-and-trade. But that presents its own tricky set of challenges. As the D’ situation reminded us all this past summer, a sign-and-trade triggers the hard cap.So let’s walk down this theoretical path. Let’s say Giannis tells the he’s signing with the Warriors and Milwaukee agrees to a sign-and-trade to recoup any sort of value. The Warriors would need to add a matching salary, most likely Wiggins, plus trim at least one more big contract off the books to slide Giannis in under the hard cap.Green would likely be the Warriors’ preferred candidate of sacrifice over Thompson, but he also makes nearly $14 million less, an important note. A trio of Curry, Thompson and Giannis, at his projected max, would make a combined $122.2 million in the 2021-22 season. With at least 11 more roster spots to fill, that’s too much. Won’t fit under the hard cap.Substitute Green for Thompson and that lowers the trio’s combined number to $107.3 million. That’s more reasonable, if supplemented by 11 minimums. So to get Giannis, it’s pretty clear that Thompson (along with Wiggins) would need to be the sacrifice. One would likely go to the Bucks, while they’d have to find a home for the other.How easy would that be? To unload a massive contract in an unsteady financial environment without taking back any matching salary? Pretty tough, though theoretically possible. Maybe a team like the has a ton of summer cap space and would just absorb the deal, attached to a pick, once they whiff on Plan A.But all the machinations and hypotheticals and surrounding egos and differing motives and rival franchises needed to land this plane make it seem like an impossible task to complete. Too much to juggle.The cleaner path would be a trade before his contract runs out. But, before I get to that, there’s an elephant in the room worth discussing.The NBA, ESPN and Turner agreed to a new TV deal worth $24 billion in the middle of the last decade. It kicked in before the 2016-17 season. The idea of a multi-year cap smoothing was rejected by the players union. So that sudden jump in money led to an unprecedented spike during the Durant offseason, leading to unintended consequences — fortunate and unfortunate, depending on your favorite franchise.The used that extra space to overpay and . The cashed out and . The Warriors, meanwhile, used the spike — the salary cap went from $70 million the season prior to $94.1 million — for Durant.staffers still shake their heads to this day about the unlucky timing. They believe, had the spike not arrived that exact summer or had it been smoothed, Durant never would’ve had the Warriors option and would’ve stayed in Oklahoma City. Maybe. There are Warriors people who believe they still could’ve got it done, it just would’ve cost them and , making a combined $16.8 million.Either way, it was a stroke of circumstantial luck. It either got them Durant or allowed them to keep Iguodala and Livingston in their rotation for three more seasons, forming perhaps the most talented top-six of a roster this sport has ever seen.This time around, as Giannis’ contract ticks closer to expiration — he’s fewer than 14 months from unrestricted free agency — a similar stroke of salary-cap luck doesn’t appear imminent. Actually, the opposite.You know that $116 million projected cap for next season? Or the $125 million projected for the following season, Giannis’ first on his next deal? Those were delivered to teams in September. Circumstances have changed. The ongoing global crisis is going to lower those numbers.How substantially? To be determined. If the league can pull off some sort of reimagined playoffs this summer, even without fans, that’ll minimize the losses. If the health crisis subsides enough for crowds to congregate in arenas by the start of next season, that’ll ease a lot of the current worry, which would be reflected in the salary cap the next few seasons.But if not, if this catastrophe continues to drag, there are owners a $25 million to $30 million cap cut. Anything even half that number would make the most challenging of theorized sign-and-trade Giannis to the Warriors maneuvers all the more impossible.Once this season is completed and the full financial damage is assessed, CBA alterations are expected. I guess it’s possible a rule change or two could inadvertently clear the way. If, for whatever reason, the hard cap trigger was abolished, sign-and-trades would become less restrictive. On our most , Ethan Strauss mentioned the idea of another amnesty clause, like back in 2011. That’d make it a whole lot easier to shed a big salary if there’s a need to clear cap space.But barring an accidental CBA miracle from the lawyers above, it doesn’t seem plausible to me that the Warriors could fit Giannis onto the roster during the 2021 summer. So it’d have to come via trade before then, which (as mentioned above) was always the cleaner logistical path.Whenever the transactional offseason commences, Giannis has a decision to make. Milwaukee will offer him a supermax extension. The uncertain cap numbers ahead presumably make it less likely he signs it. If he doesn’t sign it — therefore not committing to the Bucks a summer before he can walk away for nothing — some have wondered if Milwaukee might explore trading him.I don’t see it that way. It reminds me of Durant’s final season in Oklahoma City. He didn’t commit to the Thunder the summer before, but no one questioned whether the franchise should proactively move him. It wouldn’t have made sense. They were a title contender — like the Bucks are now and will be next season — and knew a championship a month before free agency would’ve been the ultimate recruitment pitch.It didn’t work out. OKC crumbled in the Western Conference finals. Durant left. But nobody in that franchise, to this day, second-guesses their decision to go for it. Particularly in a smaller market, you don’t get many legit shots at NBA titles. You don’t get many chances to employ all-time greats. You don’t give them away unless forced.Imagine if Giannis didn’t sign the extension this summer, told the world he wasn’t ready to commit and instead wanted to play out the season, chase another title with the Bucks and explore his future the following summer. Then imagine the Bucks absorbed that news and instead decided to trade him to the Warriors for Wiggins, potential draft pick and Minnesota’s first-rounder next season.Would Milwaukee’s fan base ever forgive the franchise? I know the Thunder’s fan base wouldn’t have if, during the 2015 offseason, they traded Durant for Harrison Barnes, and the draft pick that became because, well, we didn’t know if he was going to return.It’s not happening. The Bucks are only trading Giannis if he comes out publicly, style, and demands they do so. That’s when the PR blame shifts. That’s when the villain becomes the player, not the team. That’s when it becomes understandable to give up a mid-prime MVP — when you know he’s leaving, the fans know he’s leaving and the relationship becomes untenable.But does anyone think Giannis would do that in Milwaukee? The Davis situation was different. He played for a poorly-run franchise going nowhere. They didn’t have any shot at winning the 2019 title. Even as he sat out and grumbled, he knew he wasn’t ruining something potentially special, just the chance to be a No. 6-seed. He figured the massive PR hit was worth the strong-arm negotiation ploy to force his way to Los Angeles.That’s not Giannis’ situation. Milwaukee’s built up a team and system that fits him well. Even if they get eliminated early this summer in a lame no-fan environment, there’s no reason for Giannis not to believe that the Bucks are a legit contender next season. When the season froze, they were an NBA-best 53-12. They were 28-3 at home. The main pieces remain under contract. There’s no guarantee he will stay past next season. But that’s enough reason to run it back at least one more time before re-examining.The Warriors will remain ambitious. They will explore all avenues, not just for Giannis, but for and any other big name they believe can boost an aging core as it moves beyond the decade it owned. If an opportunity presents itself, they’ll pounce.But, ask anyone in the organization — during their private or public moments — they got Wiggins with the expectation that he’ll be their starting small forward next season, not just a matching contract to flip (like they did with Russell). They are aggressive but rational. They got Durant because there was a road to Durant. It’s hard to see a road to Giannis.(Photo: Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images)

May 14, 2020When you pull off the improbable, people tend to believe you can do it again. Rise from the ashes for a title, dodge six pass rushers and throw an off-balance 40-yard dart for a touchdown, hire away a rival’s big-name employee — whatever the unlikely sports task, once completed, opponents gain greater fear and fans more confidence you can repeat it., entering the 2015 summer, and , entering the 2020 summer, have obvious parallels. Durant was 26. Giannis is 25. Durant was an all-time great reaching the front side of his prime just as he prepared for the final season of his...

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Anthony Slater

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The Warriors’ path to Giannis is far less plausible than it was to Kevin Durant

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