The Warriors are the latest NBA team to reach an agreement with a sponsor for jersey advertisements, and the terms of that deal are eye-popping. As Darren Rovell of ESPN details, the Warriors’ jersey three-year sponsorship agreement with Japanese tech company Rakuten is worth $20MM annually, which nearly doubles the second-most valuable deal signed so far — the Cavaliers’ agreement with Goodyear is said to be worth about $12MM per year.

“We actually had multiple finalists,” Warriors chief marketing officer Chip Bowers said, per Rovell. “This was not the biggest deal that we were offered. … We saw an opportunity, given the visibility we were receiving. So we felt in order to grow our global vision, we had to be aligned with a global brand.”

The Warriors can’t put that $60MM commitment from Rakuten – which owns cash-back site Ebates, messaging app Viber, and e-book brand Kobo – directly toward team salary. However, as Mark Medina of The Bay Area News Group writes, a deal of that magnitude can indirectly help the franchise build its roster.

Here’s more from out of the Bay Area:

• After Kevin Durant said on Bill Simmons’ podcast last month that “nobody wants to play in Under Armours,” Stephen Curry – Under Armour’s top endorser – had a conversation with his teammate to clear the air. “This is nothing that is going to put a wrench in the locker room,” Curry told Scott Fowler of The Charlotte Observer.
• Having just signed a new five-year deal with the Warriors, Curry will be under contract through age 34, and he says that he hopes to play for a few more years beyond that. As Fowler details in the Observer piece linked above, Curry’s goal is to at least match the 16 years that his father Dell Curry spent in the NBA. So far, the eight-year veteran is halfway to that point — the 2024/25 season would be his 16th.
• Within his latest mailbag, Anthony Slater of The Athletic addresses that “brand battle” between Curry and Durant, while also discussing Andre Iguodala‘s Hall-of-Fame chances, the Warriors’ biggest weakness, and much more.

The Warriors are bringing back just about all of their key free agents involved in last season’s championship run, and Kevin Durant‘s willingness to accept a discount on his new deal helped the team to make those moves. Stephen Curry, who received the largest contract of Golden State’s offseason, tells Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic that he also asked the Warriors about the possibility of taking a discount to accommodate other players.

“I actually asked [GM] Bob [Myers],” Curry said. “If I were to take a discount — at any number, I don’t know what it would be — how much of a difference would that make for us to be able to sign other guys. It wasn’t like [Durant’s] situation. His had a direct impact on us being able to sign Andre [Iguodala] and Shaun [Livingston]. And it was just an unbelievable sacrifice by KD. But mine didn’t matter.”

It’s true that it made much more sense for Durant to accept a discount than Curry. The Warriors held Curry’s Bird rights, meaning the team could make him a five-year maximum salary offer without affecting other free agents. If Curry had taken a discount on the first year, it would have impacted his earnings in all future seasons as well, since raises are limited to 8% annually. Durant, on the other hand, is likely to opt out of his new deal in 2018, so he’ll likely trade a few million dollars this year for a larger – and longer-term – payday a year from now.

If Durant had wanted a max deal of his own this offseason, the Warriors probably would have had to renounce both Iguodala’s and Livingston’s cap holds to make it happen, since the club didn’t hold KD’s full Bird rights.

Still, Durant accepted an even more significant discount than he needed to, allowing the Warriors to avoid going as deep into the tax as they otherwise might’ve. That aspect of Durant’s discount didn’t technically have an impact on the amount the Warriors could offer their free agents by CBA rules — it simply reduced the club’s projected tax penalties, perhaps making ownership more willing to spend on other players.

When considering Curry’s and Durant’s new agreements, it’s also worth noting that Curry was underpaid for the last several seasons, having just finished up a four-year, $44MM contract. He won two MVP awards and two titles during the life of that contract, so it made sense for the Warriors to reward him with a full max deal.