The Warriors have a blueprint in place to keep their core group together for the next five years having inked Steph Curry to a max contract this summer. The cost of that plan is staggering, with the price tag going well over $1 billion, but it’s likely a price worth paying to continue being the NBA title favorite for the foreseeable future.
Kevin Durant helped lighted the cost of that plan some this summer by taking a significant pay cut to just $25 million on his 1-and-1 deal, which he’ll almost assuredly recoup next summer in the form of a max deal of his own. After Durant re-signs, it will be Klay Thompson’s turn to re-up in the Bay, and he, like Durant, is considering making some financial concessions to make sure the franchise can keep quality role players around their stars.
With Durant taking $25 million this summer, Golden State was able to keep Andre Iguodala from walking to Houston as well as Shaun Livingston. While their four stars are the key to being title favorites, the Warriors’ depth is what makes them a juggernaut capable of withstanding an injury to one of those stars, like happened with Durant last season.
When Thompson is negotiating a new deal in 2019, he explained to reporters in China (via the Mercury News) why he would consider taking a pay cut like Durant to help keep the full Warriors squad intact (something he originally said was under consideration on a podcast with The Athletic).
“We’re talking like 24 months away,” Thompson said before practice on Wednesday at Shenzhen City Arena. “But it’s something that definitely crossed my mind, especially when you see guys like Kevin (Durant) doing it.”
Like with Durant, a pay cut to stay with the Warriors can be made possible for Thompson due to his supplemental income from sponsorships. While the star shooting guard doesn’t have quite the $200 million sneaker deal that Durant does, he said his $80 million deal with Chinese shoe company Anta along with other off-court deals make it possible for him to consider taking less from Golden State.
“100 percent, it’d be different if I was making scraps off the court,” Thompson said. “But I’ve been very blessed to be a part of winning team. When you’re part of a winning team, everybody gets to eat. So that’s why I’m indebted to the guys around me. Without them, I would not have the deals that I have.”
It’s interesting to see the recent trend of stars taking lesser deals in order to create superteams. We saw it in Miami with the original Big 3 of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Chris Bosh, and now to an even bigger degree in Golden State. With stars able to make so much with sneaker deals and other endorsements, the elite tier of players is now able to be more comfortable making sacrifices with team contracts to give their squads more cap flexibility to win titles.
Whether this is a good thing or not is up for debate. Players that make financial sacrifices to win are often lauded by the media and fans of their team, but it also sets a precedent that other players can feel pressured, unfairly, to take less or be deemed selfish. There’s also an argument that the competitive balance of the league, to whatever extent it ever truly existed, has been thrown off by the formation of superteams.
In any case, the Warriors will be thrilled that Thompson is even considering such a move. It, if nothing else, gives them confidence that he’ll happily re-sign in two years, where there had been some consideration that he could have aspirations to be “the star” on his own team, a la Kyrie Irving.
