Now that October 1, the deadline for a restricted free agent to sign his qualifying offer, has come and gone, the RFA standoffs that dominated headlines for most of the second half of the NBA offseason have all been resolved.
Josh Giddey and Jonathan Kuminga agreed to multiyear deals with the Bulls and Warriors, respectively, while Nets guard Cam Thomas and Sixers guard Quentin Grimes chose to accept their qualifying offers and hang onto their no-trade clauses for the 2025/26 season.
Today, with training camps in full swing around the NBA, we're taking a closer look at Kuminga's deal, Grimes' decision, and a few other cap- and roster-related topics from across the league.
Let's dive in...
Warriors have a few logical trade partners already.
Wizards for Middleton a protected first rounder + Warriors own 2030 first rounder in exchange for Kuminga and Moody. Warriors get clean books and future assets in exchange for Giannis’ best man to grease the wheels for an eventual summer trade of every Warriors draft asset + Jimmy Butler for Giannis in his walk year.
Or…
Kuminga for Kuzma and a first rounder, assuming Kuzma continues to struggle in Mil. Kuzma and Draymond are friends, and Kuzma’s contract lines up with the Warriors’ desire for ‘27 max cap space.
@jacobjackson
Interesting ideas. Let’s talk about the Washington trade and its underlying assumptions.
I’m seeing a common misconception about the Warriors’ goal for cap space in 2027 (I think the source of this is Jake Fisher, although maybe he’s being misunderstood). The Warriors goal is not about maximizing cap space in a “tear-down” at the end of the 2026-27 season, but about minimizing the time for a rebuild.
Joe Lacob has been talking about life after Steph for the last 2 years (possibly as soon as 18 months from now), and why developing and retaining Podz, JK, Moody, etc is so important. Lacob says that you can’t build from scratch a sustainable contending team using only free agency and trades. You have to start with a young core, otherwise you spend 6 years out of the playoffs.
With Draymond, Butler, Hield, and Horford contracts expired, that’s already ~$100M cleared. (Steph could also retire then, at 40 years old, which would clear more than $160M). That’s more than enough space to sign high-priced FA’s.
So, to your trade…GSW doesn’t see 22 yr-old Moses Moody’s 3 year team-friendly $13M/yr deal as a liability that should be cleared. Similary, 22 yr-old Kuminga’s contract is not something they want to dump. Sure, these 2 players could be traded, but it wouldn’t be for heavily protected draft picks in 2030. (Washington’s rights to the Warriors 2030 first rounder, is top 20 protected, so the Warriors wouldn’t pay much to reacquire it.)
So, no way would the Warriors trade both Kuminga and Moody now for a couple of low quality firsts.
Luke Adams,
This is a question about how Kuminga’s “trade kicker” would be handled in the case they want to trade him by the trade deadline. For purposes of the following question, I’m assuming the Warriors cap space is now, effectively, zero, with the formal announcement of a Steph Curry agreement:
link to goldenstateofmind.com.
Bay Area media has seemed confused about the Kuminga contract, but they’ve been saying that Kuminga’s trade kicker amounts to, effectively, the right to a trade veto since the Warriors wouldn’t be able to pay him that money and stay under the cap.
Is that correct? Are the Warriors prevented from trading Kuminga unless they can free up further cap space because the trade kicker is due immediately? Does Kuminga have the right to waive the trade kicker to enable the trade.
The Warriors’ cap situation wouldn’t prevent them from trading Kuminga. While they would be responsible for paying that trade bonus, he’d be coming off their cap at the same time. The bonus would increase his cap hit (from, say, $22.5MM to $24.2MM), but his new team, not the Warriors, would be responsible for accommodating that increased cap hit — the bonus wouldn’t count against Golden State’s cap.
He could also waive part or all of the bonus, but he shouldn’t have to and I doubt he’d be very eager to do so anyway.
Gotcha, thanks.
Would the salary matching in the trade be based on the with-kicker or the without-kicker number?
From the Warriors’ perspective, the outgoing number would be without-kicker. From the new team’s perspective, the incoming number would be with-kicker.
That small disparity could create issues in certain situations, especially if the Warriors are making a deal with another apron team. But in most trade scenarios involving non-apron teams (like the two outlined by @jacobjackson in the first comment here), it shouldn’t matter.
Actually, I should clarify that the Kuzma deal wouldn’t quite work, but that’s because of Kuzma’s unlikely incentives — nothing related to Kuminga’s trade bonus.
Luke- do you know whether the trade kicker would also apply to the option year?
As in, does the other team have to pay him with the “with kicker” amount for the 2nd year if it exercises the option?
No, not unless the option were exercised as part of the trade (which seems extremely unlikely).
Options that haven’t been picked up yet aren’t taken into account for trade bonus calculations (see Caleb Martin’s year-over-year cap hits for a good example of this — the trade bonus he got last season applied to his 2.5 remaining guaranteed years, but NOT to his fourth-year option, so his cap hits for this season and next are now both higher than his player option cap hit in 2027/28).
Thanks!!!
Do you also have this mastery of the NFL CBA?
I used to know it pretty well (I was the head writer over at Pro Football Rumors when we first launched that site years ago), but that knowledge has sort of fallen by the wayside over the last decade as I dug into deeper to the NBA CBA. I like just being a fan of the other sports now.
I’ll take that as meaning there are under 100 people in the world who know it better than you :-)