After the Golden State Warriors signed Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins to extensions before the start of the season, they project to have somewhere around $450 million in payroll plus luxury tax penalties next season.
The Warriors would prefer to get that number under $420 million in order to avoid losing money.
“It’s not possible without losing quite a bit of money at the bottom line, let’s put it that way,” Lacob said on the Tim Kawakami podcast earlier this week. “I did say that (it was impossible). And it is from a business perspective an almost insane thing to even consider. But I think we’re going to have to wait and see, because the truth is, winning matters. And I want to win another championship. We want to win another championship this year, and I’ll probably say it at the end of this year too. …
“And right now, we’re in the present and we’re trying to win. And I think we’ve got a good shot to do that. I think we’re coming together. And the trade deadline is coming up, we’ll see if there’s a way we can improve our team, and if we can obviously improve our financial situation going forward, we would love to do that. But not at the sacrifice of being able to win. We’ve got to evaluate this in real-time but with a look toward the future as well.
“I can’t really answer the question right now other than to say: When have you ever known me not to be aggressive? We are aggressive. We’ll do whatever we can do if it makes sense and we’re in a winning, real championship mode.”
The Warriors claim to have lost money for the first time last season despite netting about $40 million from their playoff ticket sales.
“I don’t know the exact answer, but it’s probably close,” Lacob said when asked if they will lose money this season. “It depends how far we go in the playoffs. If we go to the finals, we should be OK. If we don’t, we’ll probably lose money. …
“All I could tell you is we’re just trying to keep up. We have a unique situation in that we have this aging but still great set of players. We have championship aspirations, and it costs a lot of money to do that. And we’re going to try like heck to rectify our finances going forward, but not at the expense of being able to win.”
Klay Thompson or Draymond Green could be a player to exit the team early due to financial concerns despite everything they’ve done for the franchise both on and off the floor.
“Whether we like to hear this or not, players do get older and their skills erode; the question is trying to time all that,” Lacob said. “We would like them to retire, all three of them, as Warriors. I really would like that. We really would like that. And I think they would like that. And we’re going to try to do that if it makes sense.
“But unfortunately, if you look through the history of professional sports, let’s look at the NBA in particular, it usually doesn’t end that way. Players want to hang on sometimes a little longer than they can or should. Organizations sometimes want to hang on to a dream longer. So you’re trying to put all that into perspective and trying to balance it all. Bill Walsh, I think I’ve quoted him before, once said, ‘Better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late.’ I’m not saying we’re thinking like that necessarily, but it’s really an important statement. You don’t want to go through a decade of being bad, either, for our fans, right? It’s a very difficult calculus.
“I want to keep those guys here. I want them to be here. As long as they’re playing at a very high level, rest assured they will be here. I would love obviously for some of them to sacrifice (in salary) a little bit, or what they perceive as a sacrifice, to stay and to help our organization maintain a great roster. You always hope for that. It usually doesn’t happen. And I can’t blame them because they have limited life spans as players and they want to make as much money as they can.”
Curry is signed through 25-26, but Green and Thompson can become free agents earlier.
“Draymond and Klay, first of all, they’re both under contract for next year, so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here,” Lacob said. “They’re under nice contracts for next year. Making a lot of money. We’ll have to wait and see how this season ends and then we’ll decide and they’ll decide. In Draymond’s case, he gets to decide, he has the power. He gets to opt in or opt out, do what he wants. I’d love for him to stay. That may be staying under his existing contract, it may mean he opts out and renegotiates something, a new deal that works for everyone, or it may mean that he gets offered a huge amount of money and we could sit here and be saying, ‘Man, how could we do that,’ and we’d have to make a decision. And that would involve other people’s careers.
“It’s complicated. Everyone knows that. Unfortunately, I’m sitting in the hot seat along with Bob Myers. It’s going to stay hot for a while.”