We’ve heard rumblings that other owners are not happy with the Warriors’ exorbitant payroll. Now it appears they are trying to do something about it.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the league is pursuing an “upper salary” limit, essentially a hard cap, that will prevent the likes of the Warriors, Nets and Clippers from running up significant luxury tax bills. The proposal is expect to be met with significant pushback from the player’s association.
Apparently Brian Windhorst’s comment about “checkbook wins” is shared by a number of NBA owners who don’t have the cash, or are unwilling to spend, at the level of Warriors owner Joe Lacob. Ironically, as of March of this year, Lacob’s projected net worth was in the bottom third of NBA owners.
The Warriors are on pace to have a payroll around $500 million next year when all of the luxury tax penalties are taken into account. They have been able to do this by retaining and extending players that they’ve either drafted or signed. The league penalizes teams for going over the $123.6 salary cap, but penalizes them for percentages on the dollar, penalties that increase the higher the payroll, and the more consecutive years the team in question goes over.
This year, the Warriors have a cap allocation of $202 million, nearly $80 over the cap, plus an estimated tax penalty of $170 million, a record for the highest payroll ever. Next year, those two numbers combined are projected to be over $500 million.
Still it should be noted, the Warriors are paying high salaries to Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Jordan Poole, all players they drafted. Even if the league decides to implement stricter cap rules, making it harder to re-sign players you drafted would seem to set up a poor incentive structure.
