Southwest Notes: Morey, Williams, McGee, Gentry
It’s up to the players to pull the Rockets out of the malaise that cost former coach Kevin McHale his job, according to GM Daryl Morey, but Morey acknowledges to TNT’s David Aldridge that some of the fault lies at his own desk, as Aldridge relays in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com.
“Except for Dwight Howard, there really isn’t anybody on the roster playing well, and those are all my decisions,” Morey said. “I can’t hide from that.”
The Rockets won their first game after switching from McHale to interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff but lost both of their games since, and they’re tied with the Kings at 5-9 for 12th place in the Western Conference. See more from the Southwest Division:
- Chandler Parsons doesn’t understand why Deron Williams has a reputation as a negative locker room force, citing evidence of the opposite to Jake Fischer of SI.com. Wesley Matthews observes a positive attitude from Williams in the face of challenges, like the erosion of his game, a change Williams acknowledges, as Fischer adds. “My days of scoring 20 and 10 are over. I know that,” said Williams, who gave up nearly $16MM to buy his way off the Nets before signing with the Mavericks for $11MM over two years.
- The return of JaVale McGee puts the squeeze on the minutes of early-season revelation Dwight Powell, notes Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News. The Mavs have until January 7th to decide whether to pay McGee his full salary of $1.27MM or waive him and pay only his $750K partial guarantee.
- Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry was satisfied as the lead assistant for the Warriors last season and didn’t think he’d end up with another head coaching job until New Orleans came calling, observes Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic. “I was not going to take a job just to have a job as a head coach unless it was a situation that I thought was going to give you an opportunity to win and win big and compete for a championship,” Gentry said. “I really didn’t have any desire just to take another NBA job.”
Warriors Notes: Barnes’ Free Agency, Going 16-0
The Warriors have the best record in the league at 14-0 and they will attempt to tie the record for most wins to start a season when they take on the Nuggets on Sunday. Breaking that record is something the team has its eye on, Nick Kosmider of the Denver Post writes.
“It’s a goal that’s right here and now and it’s something that we want to experience,” Stephen Curry said. “It’d be a huge accomplishment [to set the record for best start] because doing something that hasn’t been done in the history of the league is special. You never know if this opportunity will come back again. There are so many variables that go into winning this many in a row, especially at the start of the season.”
Coming off a 67 win campaign, it seemed like it would be difficult to improve. Yet, the team is looking even better this season and Chuck Myron of Hoops Rumors examines what the team did over the summer to remain successful and put itself in position to start the season with a record of 16-0.
Here are a few notes out of Golden State:
- Tim Kawakami of the Mercury News believes another team will present Harrison Barnes with an offer sheet that contains annual salaries of over $20MM and assuming the Warriors do not land Kevin Durant, they will match that kind of offer. Such a contract would make Barnes the highest paid player on the team.
- Barnes’ teammates are aware of the forward’s impending free agency and it impacts the team’s play, Darius Soriano of Forumblueandgold.com relays on Twitter. “It’s a contract year for him & we’re going…to try [and] get him as much as possible,” Andre Iguodala said.
Pacific Notes: Green, Kobe, Scott, Malone
There was no way of knowing Draymond Green would develop into a player making in excess of $16MM a year on his new five-year, $82MM deal, Warriors GM Bob Myers remarked recently, and Green admits he didn’t know how valuable he would become, either, observes Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com. Green was the 35th overall pick in 2012 and made the minimum salary last season.
“Yeah, I was thinking, like, maybe $7, $8MM,” Green said, according to Strauss. “Who saw this coming?”
The free agent market is never quite predictable, but the Warriors seem to have a handle on it even amid the rapid cost escalation for Green, as I examined earlier this week. See more from the Pacific Division:
- Kobe Bryant said this summer that he could envision himself playing overseas after his NBA career, but that’s not in his plans for now, as he told Marc Stein of ESPN.com within the past week. The Lakers star also said this week that he doesn’t see himself playing beyond the season, barring a change.
- The demanding nature of coach Byron Scott makes for a challenging adjustment, Nick Young posited as he talked about the struggles of offseason signee Lou Williams. Bill Oram of the Orange County Register has the details.
- Michael Malone cited the trouble the Kings have faced after his firing in response to a question about Houston’s dismissal of Kevin McHale this week, notes Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee. “I can only speak to my experience [in Sacramento],” Malone said. “It was loud and clear that I didn’t lose the locker room. Once I got fired, the organization lost the team in a weird way.”
Offseason In Review: Golden State Warriors
Hoops Rumors is in the process of looking back at each team’s offseason, from the end of the playoffs in June right up until opening night. Trades, free agent signings, draft picks, contract extensions, option decisions, camp invitees and more will be covered as we examine the moves each franchise made over the last several months.
Signings
- Leandro Barbosa: One year, $2.5MM. Signed via taxpayer mid-level exception.
- Ian Clark: One year, $947K. Signed via minimum salary exception. Partially guaranteed for $474K.
- Draymond Green: Five years, $82MM. Signed via Bird Rights.
Extensions
- None
Trades
- Acquired Gerald Wallace and Chris Babb from the Celtics in exchange for David Lee. Babb was subsequently waived.
- Acquired Jason Thompson from the Sixers in exchange for Wallace, $1MM in cash, and the right to swap Golden State’s 2016 first-round pick with the lesser of the 2016 first-round picks that the Heat and the Thunder owe Philadelphia.
Waiver Claims
- None
Draft Picks
- Kevon Looney (Round 1, 30th overall). Signed via rookie exception to rookie scale contract.
Camp Invitees
- Jarell Eddie — Waived.
- Ben Gordon — Waived.
- Xavier Henry — Waived.
- Tony Mitchell — Waived.
- Juwan Staten — Waived.
- Chris Udofia — Waived.
Departing Players
Rookie Contract Option Decisions
- None
Teams that win 67 regular season games and the NBA championship usually have little room to improve. The 2015 offseason and the start of the 2015/16 season provide strong evidence that the Warriors are the exception to the rule.
Golden State has started 12-0 in spite of the absence of Steve Kerr, who was perhaps the team’s most significant offseason addition in 2014. That Luke Walton, who was no better than third in command last season behind Kerr and former top assistant Alvin Gentry, has been able to pilot the Warriors without a hiccup thus far is testament to the system Kerr put in place but more so to the Warriors front office, a collaborative group with GM Bob Myers in the lead role. Myers, the reigning Executive of the Year, delivered an encore performance as the team accomplished the two most critical player personnel tasks it faced this past summer.
The first was to secure Draymond Green for the long term. Little doubt existed, even amid rumors that tied him to his home-state Pistons, that the B.J. Armstrong client would remain with the Warriors, by dint of Golden State’s ability to match all competing bids in his restricted free agency. The questions were whether he would sign directly with the Warriors or with another team on an offer sheet, and just how close he would come to the maximum salary. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports raised the notion that the Warriors would prefer that if he signed for the max, he do so via offer sheet, thus absolving themselves of first-hand blame if Green were to end up making more than Thompson, who conceded to slightly less than the max on the extension he signed in 2014.
The Warriors wound up avoiding such a thorny scenario when Green somewhat surprisingly agreed to a deal with the Warriors that totals some $12MM less than the max over five years. Green was willing to take a discount to help keep the team together in the face of a mounting tax bill, as Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group heard shortly before the start of free agency, but apparently the former 35th overall pick and the Warriors had their differences about just how much he should sacrifice. Regardless, Green’s value continues to escalate. He’s shooting 40.4% on 3-pointers after last season’s career-best 33.7% mark, and he’s suddenly become the team’s leader in assists, with 6.9 per game, almost double last season’s average of 3.7. Time will tell if those numbers are sustainable, but the 25-year-old has shown vast improvement with each passing year, and it looks like that trend will continue. He’s no longer the colossal bargain he was when he was making the minimum salary, but the Warriors are probably still underpaying him.
The opposite was true for the man Green replaced in the starting lineup last season. An offseason David Lee trade seemed inevitable as he disappeared from the rotation. If his sudden re-emergence in the Finals cast any doubt on that idea, it vanished mere hours after the Warriors won the title, when Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported that the Warriors and Lee’s reps had agreed to work together to find a new home for him. ESPN’s Zach Lowe reported shortly thereafter that the team’s cut of gate receipts from its run to the Finals were vast enough that the team would see fit to trade him and take a lesser salary in return rather than simply trading him into another team’s cap space and taking no salary back. That was fortuitous for the Warriors, since apparently no one made them an offer that would have taken his entire salary of almost $15.494MM off their hands. The Knicks and Lakers reportedly considered trading for the Mark Bartelstein client, but ultimately it was the Celtics who did so in a deal that took nearly full advantage of the salary-matching cushion and cleaved about a third of Lee’s salary from Golden State’s books. That was only step one, however.
It seemed almost obvious in the immediate wake of the deal that the Warriors would waive Gerald Wallace, whom they acquired in the Lee trade, and spread his salary via the stretch provision, a tool they couldn’t use with Lee because he signed his deal prior to the 2011 collective bargaining agreement. Stretching Wallace would have pushed the majority of his salary, and the associated tax burden, off to future seasons, when the tax threshold will be higher in accordance with the rising cap. Instead, the Warriors clung to Wallace and deftly flipped him to the Sixers in a trade that achieved the dual ends of lowering the payroll and adding a productive player. Essentially, the Warriors parlayed Lee into Jason Thompson through a pair of moves that saved Golden State nearly $8.6MM in salary and an estimated $22.1MM in luxury tax payments. The collateral costs were minimal: $1MM in cash to the Sixers plus a pick swap that only comes into play if the Heat or the Thunder end up with a better record than the Warriors do. Chris Babb came in the deal with the Celtics, but his salary was non-guaranteed and he didn’t make the Warriors out of training camp.
The primary benefit was financial, as Golden State has yet to find much of a need for Thompson in its already-stacked rotation, even though Andrew Bogut missed time with a concussion. Still, Thompson is at the ready, and while he lacks the offensive pop of Lee, the ex-King was a double-figure scorer three times with Sacramento and can capably perform should the need arise. He ultimately represents an insurance policy with a more sensible premium for Golden State. His salary also makes him a handier trade chip if such an opportunity presents itself.
The Warriors weren’t quite as frugal when they brought back Leandro Barbosa for $2.5MM this season. Clearly, Myers and company wanted to keep as much of last season’s roster as possible, even if it meant shelling out more than what it was worth for a 32-year-old who was out of the league for much of 2013/14, the season before he first joined Golden State. Barbosa saw just 14.7 minutes per game in the regular season and 10.9 in the playoffs last year. It’s possible that the Pelicans, reportedly likely to have interest thanks to Gentry, drove up his price, but even so, the Warriors might have found a better use for the roughly $1.5MM difference between what they’re spending on Barbosa and what they would be shelling out on a minimum-salary deal. That $1.5MM triggers an estimated $5.625MM in extra taxes.
First-round pick Kevon Looney, by contrast, costs only slightly more than the veteran’s minimum this season, so it made sense for the Warriors to keep their pick and use it on a player who would sign this year rather than going the draft-and-stash route. Looney is expected to miss about half the season after August hip surgery, but the Warriors nonetheless have a prospect they can develop once he gets healthy, and Green is a conspicuous reminder of how players drafted with a pick in the 30s can blossom.
The Warriors mastered the elusive art of building a championship roster. The task that began this summer is to sustain it, and they’ve so far proven just as adept.
Eddie Scarito contributed to this post. The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of it.
Chris Babb Signs To Play In Germany
Former Celtics and Warriors shooting guard Chris Babb has signed with Germany’s Ratiopharm Ulm, the team announced (on Instagram). first reported the move. Babb was on the Warriors roster for the preseason after he went to Golden State in the David Lee trade, but the team waived his non-guaranteed contract before opening night.
Babb, 25, averaged 2.2 points in 11.4 minutes per game across six preseason contests for the Warriors this fall. It’s the third straight year he’s been in an NBA training camp, as he’d joined the Celtics the previous two autumns, but he’s yet to make an opening night roster. Boston signed him at midseason in 2013/14 and 2014/15, though he only played in regular season games during the first of those years, notching 1.6 points in 9.5 minutes a night over 14 appearances.
The Greg Lawrence client has spent much of his pro career in the D-League after going undrafted in 2013 out of Iowa State, where he played under now-Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg. Babb is instead bound for international ball this season, and he’s a strong fit for the European game with his floor-spacing ability and two-way game, observes Chris Reichert of Upside & Motor (Twitter link). It’s unclear if the deal gives him the power to return to the NBA later this season if an opportunity presents itself.
Western Notes: Chandler, World Peace, Durant
Nuggets small forward Wilson Chandler underwent successful surgery today to repair a labral tear in his right hip, the team announced via a press release. Chandler initially suffered the injury during the preseason and he will be out for the remainder of the 2015/16 campaign. Despite missing approximately 133 games since 2011 due to hip injuries, the veteran, who signed a four-year, $46.5MM renegotiation and extension with Denver back in July, recently told Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post that he isn’t contemplating retirement.
Here’s more from the Western Conference:
- The Lakers have assigned small forward Anthony Brown the the L.A. D-Fenders, their D-League affiliate, the team announced. This is the first trip of the season to the D-League for Brown, as our D-League assignments and recalls tracker shows. The rookie has appeared in three games for the Lakers this season, averaging 1.7 points in 3.0 minutes of action per contest.
- By not signing Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli to rookie scale extensions prior to this season’s deadline, the Warriors have left open the possibility of swinging a sign-and-trade deal for Kevin Durant this offseason, Danny Leroux of the Sporting News posits. Leroux also runs down a number of other scenarios that could result in Golden State potentially trotting out one of the greatest offensive teams of all-time, though the scribe does note that Barnes and Ezeli, both of whom are eligible to become restricted free agents next summer, would have the right to decline any sign-and-trade agreement.
- Lakers coach Byron Scott was worried that Metta World Peace‘s body wouldn’t hold up through training camp, but the 16th-year veteran who just turned 36 says he’s in better shape than when he was with the Lakers the first time, notes Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News. World Peace is seeing occasional starting assignments and 19.1 minutes per game. “You have to give him a lot of credit for somebody who was out of the league for a couple of years,” Scott said. “He worked as hard as he worked to get back into the league and be able to be a vital part of what we’re trying to do. It’s been great.”
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Pacific Notes: Lin, Walton, Goodwin
The Warriors were among the teams to show interest in Jeremy Lin while he was a free agent this summer, as he told reporters, including Marc Berman of the New York Post. Lin instead wound up signing with the Hornets, a team that wasn’t initially within the top six among his preferences, the point guard added, as Berman relays.
“I entertained it,’’ Lin said. “I just felt like they had something great going there, and if I went there, it would be a very limited role. I felt like, ‘I’m 27 now.’ I want to find where I can be as big a part of a successful team as I can.’’
Hornets coach Steve Clifford calls Lin a bargain on his two-year deal worth more than $4.374MM and said that when he was an assistant coach with the Lakers in 2012/13, head coach Mike D’Antoni wanted the Lakers to try to acquire Lin, whom D’Antoni coached on the Knicks, Berman notes. Ironically, Lin played for the Lakers last season, right after D’Antoni left. See more from the Pacific Division:
- Klay Thompson, in the first season of his four-year extension, says he prefers being on a winner over putting up gaudy stats on a losing team, and interim coach Luke Walton doesn’t see signs of the Warriors growing anxious to see what they could do on their own, observes Chris Mannix of SI.com. I don’t see this team having any of those type of issues,” Walton said to Mannix. “There’s no way to tell, obviously. Contract stuff can come up. But that’s not the type of locker room that it looks like. If I were betting, I’d say it won’t happen.”
- Archie Goodwin made some noise about his lack of playing time last season, but he’s been a part of the rotation for the Suns the past two games, and Jeff Hornacek won’t rule out making that a permanent role for him, observes Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic. “He’s played pretty well through the preseason and practices,” Hornacek said. “He’s earned the opportunity. He’s long. He’s quick so he can cover some ground. Now that he’s gotten stronger, he doesn’t get pushed around as much.”
Hoops Rumors Community Shootaround 11/16/15
With all the dominant teams the NBA has seen throughout its history, only one was able to reach the magic 70-win mark. The 1995/96 Bulls piled up 72 victories that season en route to another championship.
We’ve seen plenty of star-laden teams since that season. There were the Shaquille O’Neal–Kobe Bryant Lakers during the early 2000s. The formidable trio of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce with the Celtics. The next super trio of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh with the Heat. And, of course, the enduring championship Spurs trio of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.
Yet none of those units reached the gold standard of 70 regular-season victories. Only six teams in the past decade have recorded at least 65 wins and just two have notched 67 victories — the 2006/07 Mavericks and last year’s Warriors.
It certainly seems as if the Warriors are even better this season, despite the absence of coach Steve Kerr due to health issues. Golden State enters the week as the league’s only undefeated team. The Warriors are 11-0 after surviving their biggest scare of the young season, an overtime win over the Nets. In most games, they’ve won by double digits, highlighted by a 50-point blowout of the Grizzlies.
Reigning league Most Valuable Player Stephen Curry is off to a fabulous start, threatening to add a scoring title to the list of his accomplishments. The core group that produced an NBA championship last season looks as cohesive and as confident as ever, plus they’re getting an unexpected large contribution from Festus Ezeli, who has started all but one game with center Andrew Bogut recovering from a concussion.
This leads us to our question of the day: Will the Warriors become the second team in league history to win 70 games?
Please take to the comments section below to share your thoughts and opinions on the subject. We look forward to what you have to say.
Pacific Rumors: Kings, Bryant, Bogut
DeMarcus Cousins doesn’t trust coach George Karl, and they simply don’t get along, writes TNT’s David Aldridge in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com. The relationship is beyond repair, Aldridge believes, and while he thinks Cousins is the best center in the game, the Kings should trade him anyway, he posits, offering a suggestion for a deal he thinks would help Sacramento and send a message that GM Vlade Divac and Karl will be around for the long term. The criticism of Karl’s energy level is unfair, and the Kings should empower one of the best coaches ever, Aldridge opines.
In other news around the Pacific Division:
- Numerous league executives doubt that Kobe Bryant will last the season, Sam Amico of SamAmicoBasketball.com reports. One unnamed GM told Amico that Bryant’s body can no longer hold up to the rigors of an 82-game NBA season. “I hope I’m wrong, because who doesn’t admire an old warrior — but he has nowhere to go but down at this stage of his playing career,” the GM said. “The body doesn’t want to be argued with, and it’s telling him it’s time to go.” Bryant played 36 minutes on Sunday, an indication that Lakers have two priorities regarding their aging superstar: allowing him to do what he wants, and winning during a supposed rebuilding season, Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com argues. By leaving Bryant on the court that long, coach Byron Scott showed that he will let Bryant play as much as he wants when he’s in uniform, Holmes continues. Bryant’s power over the Lakers organization is greater than ever and Scott, being one of his biggest supporters, will let him dictate the terms of his farewell tour, Holmes adds.
- Andrew Bogut was surprised when interim Warriors coach Luke Walton told the media he would return to the starting lineup as soon as Tuesday, Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group reports. The undefeated Warriors have utilized Festus Ezeli as the starting center while Bogut recovered from a concussion and Bogut has no problem with keeping things status quo, Leung continues. “Like I’ve said from the start, I’ve been starting my whole career, but I understand I missed [six] games there, and we won all of them,” Bogut told Leung. “Maybe the starters are used to having Festus there the first six, seven minutes and get their rhythm that way.”
Top Bloggers: Nate Parham On The Warriors
Anyone can have a blog about an NBA team, but some set themselves apart from the rest with the dedication and valuable insight they bring to their craft. We’ll be sharing some knowledge from these dialed-in writers on Hoops Rumors in a new feature called Top Bloggers. As with The Beat, our ongoing series of interviews with NBA beat writers, it’s part of an effort to bring Hoops Rumors readers ever closer to the pulse of the teams they follow. Last time, we spoke with Troy Tauscher, who is a writer for Fansided’s Valley Of The Suns. Click here to see the entire Top Bloggers series.
Next up is Nate Parham, who is the Managing Editor of SB Nation’s Golden State Of Mind. You can follow Nate on Twitter at @NateP_SBN and click here to check out his stories.
Hoops Rumors: Do you sense that the Warriors have picked up a lot of bandwagon fans since winning the title? Do you find that those fans are being embraced by the Warriors community at large or is there some sort of divide between them and those that have been fans for years?
Nate Parham: There’s no question that the Warriors have picked up a large group of bandwagon fans as a result of the championship. As a Warriors fan, I feel that “We Believe” was a flash in the pan that was exciting, but mostly in a way that diehards were best positioned to appreciate because it happened so fast after years of mediocrity. In this case, I’ve never seen so much Warriors merchandise or excitement in the Bay Area and that is definitely a sign that the Warriors have finally become cool.
Along those lines, I think the Warriors were in a unique position to expand their base. For the majority of the target demographic (18-35 year olds), they’d never really known much but losing and, as a result, a general lack of respect. And I have personally never met anyone who holds that up as a badge of honor; there’s nothing to really celebrate as valued knowledge during that time and I wouldn’t wish that torture on anyone. When the team is suddenly the “Brand New Hotness,” it’s mostly just sort of nice to have this thing you’ve invested so much emotion into finally get any type of respect. That bandwagon fans joining the party just makes it more exciting.
Hoops Rumors: Where is the expectation level for Warriors fans now? Is it title-or-bust?
Nate Parham: I think that depends on who you talk to. I think this whole thing is still sort of surreal for most people. Since the late ’70s, it’s not just that the Warriors didn’t make the playoffs much, it’s that they were never close to being a contender. Again, you sort of just have to appreciate the fact that the team is in the mix. I think another title would just be gravy at this point.
The West is tough, LeBron has a pretty easy path through the East, and there are a number of variables that could work against the Warriors this year that would lead to falling short. I fully expect this team to repeat, but if they don’t, there’s no reason that this group can’t grow from the experience and contend again next season. To me, it’s about continuing to grow and making moves to keep themselves at the top for as long as possible rather than winning every single year. It’s always interesting to note that the Spurs have never won back-to-back titles despite being considered one of the top franchises in all of U.S. pro sports.
Hoops Rumors: David Lee is out, Jason Thompson is in. What do you think the Warriors have gained in Thompson and how will the loss of Lee affect them?
Nate Parham: Well, I don’t think the loss of Lee will affect them much at all…but there are certainly Warriors fans who think that’s a huge loss. I just think that he did little for the team defensively and Harrison Barnes has been so effective as a small ball four that Lee really didn’t have a place on the team. The hope was that Thompson would be a defensive presence off the bench, but even with Bogut injured he has hardly played. So right now, all I can say we’ve gained is salary cap room because Thompson isn’t necessary to beat another team some consider a contender by 50.
Hoops Rumors: Big man Festus Ezeli did not sign an extension prior to the deadline. What was your reaction to that news? What do you think would have been a fair deal for both sides?
Nate Parham: There’s risk involved, certainly, as I really don’t think Ezeli’s value can go anywhere but up. He hadn’t played 82 games over a two year span due to injury so he had no leverage by signing now. Conversely, consider that a player like Enes Kanter got a four-year, $70MM contract to come off the bench for the Thunder this year; if Ezeli proves that he can be a functional starter for a contender this year, he’s going to command a lot of money. I’m sure he knew that. And with Bogut’s body only getting more worn down, it would make a ton of sense for the Warriors to be thinking about Ezeli as his homegrown replacement for the future.
Ultimately, reasonable money for Ezeli is probably in the $15MM per year range. Capable bigs are hard to find and if you’ve already invested the time and money developing one, you might as well hold on to him if possible.
Hoops Rumors: Barnes also broke off talks with the Warriors prior to the deadline. How do you see things playing out with him as he heads towards restricted free agency?
Nate Parham: Barnes is tricky. I’ve taken the position that not only does he fit the system but he’s also an extremely unique player in his 3-and-D versatility. I’m not one who believes he’ll be an All-Star, but he’s already becoming an elite role player and when you have Steph, Klay and Dray as your core, a young player like Barnes to go with them, that seems like a great recipe for success.
The big question is whether Barnes believes he could blossom elsewhere in an environment where he would be given more freedom to be his own man. I honestly believe that the big limiting factor for him is his handle and ability to consistently create offense: it’s nice to see him dunk on Dwight Howard, but it’s troubling to see Jamal Crawford shut him down in the post the next week. It’s hard to read minds, but if the Warriors do repeat it just seems silly to leave a championship situation. He has time to chase individual glory with his next contract; it makes far more sense right now for him to stick with a contender. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the Warriors sign him for the exact contract that was turned down this summer.