The contract is the same Green opted out of to give the Warriors flexibility to pursue LeBron James, but the sides land his return Tuesday.
Is he really worth that much still?
I don’t think so. The stats were already showing that the team would perform better when he was on the bench.
From what I have read, that that is the amount Green would have been paid if he had used the player option in last year’s contract to extend for an additional year. Not giving him that much would have been a dick move by Golden State. The team convinced him to end his contract early so that they would have space to sign LeBron. Since they failed to sign LeBron, the team allowed Green to un-terminate his contact.
By allowing this, Golden State can act talk about how they treat their players well and reward a player for taking a sacrifice for the good of the team. If they had not agreed to this deal, next time they ask a player to agree to a team friendly deal, the player would be thinking “Dray took less money to play on a better team but all he ended up with was a worse team and a pay cut.”
Yeah, that makes sense. But maybe they could have tried to find someone else to go after Lebron was no longer available?
I have not been following the Warriors signings but maybe they have? I wonder if saying that Draymond was taking a pay cut for LeBron was just cover for a salary cap dodge.
The Warriors asked him to opt out of his contract and offered him a new contract offer that covered what he was losing out on (plus a bit of cash for his troubles). Once he opted out, they used the cap room to sign a couple more players. When they were set, they filled in the date on Dray’s new contact and paid him with Bird Rights money.
