The Warriors are “leaning strongly” toward declining their team option for 2015/16 on Nemanja Nedovic, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM. The option is worth nearly $1.152MM, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows. That’s not much in the grand scheme of Golden State’s payroll, but the team is poised to have trouble avoiding the tax for 2015/16, as I outlined earlier.
Nedovic put up 1.1 points in just 5.9 minutes per game as a rookie last season, and he was an afterthought even though Golden State struggled to find a backup to Stephen Curry at the point. The Warriors signed Shaun Livingston this summer to a three year contract worth about $16.631MM in large measure to fill the backup point guard role, helping cloud the future of Nedovic, who was the 30th overall pick in 2013.
The Warriors will have about $58.1MM in commitments for next season once they pick up Festus Ezeli‘s option, as they reportedly will do, and presumably they’ll do the same with Harrison Barnes, adding about another $3.873MM. Those option pickups plus the max deal for Klay Thompson that the shooting guard is looking for would put the Warriors at roughly $77MM for eight players next season, not counting a nearly $1.271MM player option for Brandon Rush. That would put the team over the tax based on this year’s threshold, but it’s unclear where that tax line will be next year. Co-owner Joe Lacob reportedly has no desire to pay the tax at this point even though he’s spoken in the past of a willingness to do so.