Coming off of their second championship in three years the Golden State Warriors have had a busy offseason.
So far they’ve signed a two key free agents — Nick Young, Omri Casspi — as well as retaining their own free agents in Shaun Livingston and Andre Iguodala. This year proves to be much more expensive than last, but the team has arguably gotten even better.
Warriors president of basketball operations, Bob Myers, has been spending a lot of money lately most notably giving Steph Curry a five-year $201 million contract. Myers didn’t stop there however, as Kevin Durant also re-signed for $53 million over two years, taking roughly $10 million less than the max he could have gotten.
Because of Durant’s sacrifice, the Warriors were then able to offer incumbent free agents Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston $48 and $24 million contracts respectively. In addition to these signings the Warriors also shored up their bench signing former Los Angeles Laker Nick Young to a one year $5.2 million contract, as well as former Sacramento King Omri Casspi to a 1 year $2 million contract.
All of these contracts along with the money already owed to signed players such as Klay Thompson and Draymond Green add up to a total salary of $136 million. This puts the Warriors well over the luxury tax limit which will be raised from $94 million in 2017 to $99 million in 2018. Being roughly $37 million over the tax limit means the Warriors front office will be spending a big chunk of change to keep the team together.
The NBA luxury tax penalizes teams for exceeding the maximum salary that is allowed, in this case the maximum salary allowed is $99 million dollars. If a team exceeds the salary cap by $20 million teams must pay $3.75 for every dollar over that $20 million threshold. An additional tax of $.50 is added for every 5 million additional dollars spent. All told this adds up to roughly $42.8 million in luxury taxes that the Warriors will owe.
Things could get even more expensive next year, however, as the NBA has a repeat offender tax which charges teams even more for exceeding the salary cap several years in a row. Next year the luxury tax for the Warriors will increase to $4.75 per every dollar spent over the $20 million tax line. This means the Warriors luxury tax bill could increase next year to roughly $90 million.
If the Warriors want to keep this team together they will have to spend a pretty penny. It could all pay off though as the Warriors net value has increased over the last several years going from $1.3 billion in 2015 to $2.6 billion in 2017. With a new stadium on the horizon and the opportunity for many more championships to come, the only question is will the Warriors front office be willing to foot the bill for continued success.
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