OFFICIAL GSWARRIORS 2012 SEASON THREAD.

Well, he's interviewing with them tomorrow, he's a known Niners fan, so I wouldn't read TOO much into it, but it's a good sign for yall, obviously.
 
He could be the perfect center to have next to David Lee. It'd be awesome to get him
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, but I just hope he doesn't cripple the team with his salary if he comes aboard.
 
[h2]Blow It Up[/h2]
Posted by Adam Lauridsen on December 2nd, 2011 at 1:36 am | Categorized as Management | Tagged as Andris Biedrins, David Lee, Dorrell Wright, Ekpe Udoh, Joe Lacob, Larry Riley, Monta Ellis, Stephen Curry

In the almost 18 months Joe Lacob has exercised day-to-day control over the Warriors, he has changed nearly everything — except the fundamentally mismatched parts of the Warriors’ roster.  As we begin another season with big talk, bold names and the usual swirling fog of rumors, it’s hard to muster much optimism based on words alone.  Although Warriors management has no problem diagnosing the team’s problems — a lack of defense, toughness and interior scoring — they’ve so far been afraid to remake a roster currently unlikely to sniff the playoffs.  But the only thing that more terrifying than blowing up this roster is the thought of keeping it intact.

The lockout was a long time, but hopefully not so long as to wipe fans’ memories of what we’ve heard before.  For every off-season and trade deadline in recent memory, the Warriors have been linked to big names only to come up short (KG! Amare! Melo! CP3!).  Given the nature of trade discussions, it’s hard to gauge just how serious the Warriors have been in those talks.  But other GMs have commented on the Warriors’ famously high demands for their own talent and reluctance to come to terms with how the rest of the league actually values their (perennially sub-.500) roster.  Although things may change now with fresh faces in the front office, Warriors fans should be forgiven for expecting the worst so long as Larry Riley is still around to tell fans how hard he’s working to get something done.  We’ve heard this all before.

The starting point for all Warriors’ discussions should be the current roster’s lack of talent.  Any way you cut it, the team needs more.  The roster currently runs six deep (Curry, Ellis, Wright, Lee, Biedrins, Udoh).  Four of those players are one dimensional (Curry, Ellis, Lee, Udoh).  One of the players is currently no dimensional (Biedrins).  The Mavs won a championship last season with a time-tested formula: a superstar, strong defense and real depth.  As constructed, the Warriors look like the anti-Mavs.  So what to do?

Option 1:  Clear real cap space.  This would mean using the amnesty on either Biedrins or Lee.  Anyone else (Bell) wouldn’t be enough to launch the Warriors into the cap strata where they’d have a fighting chance at landing a top-level talent.  Although dropping a non-contributor (like Biedrins) for a player fitting a need (Nene or Chandler) may seem like a quick and easy fix, I’m not convinced it’s the best route to long-term success.  Given the franchise’s struggles, they’ll have to overpay (as they did with Lee) to land a meaningful free agent in a competitive market (if they can land one at all).  And the guys the Warriors are talking about aren’t true impact players — they’re just quality role players that address major needs.  Shelling out $10-15 million for sub-All Star talent (particularly injury-prone talent like Nene or Chandler) smacks of desperation rather than long-term building for a championship.  There’s no way a Warriors’ team with an expensive Nene or Chandler and, eventually, a re-signed Curry has any cap space to add another meaningful talent.  Curry, Ellis, Wright, Lee, Nene/Chandler might get you into the playoffs, but it’s still ages away from being a championship threat.

Option 2:  Trade Ellis or Curry.  If you want to play better defense, you need better defenders.  Not just Jeremy Lin/Ekpe Udoh role-player defenders, but guys that can log 40 meaningful minutes a night on both ends of the basketball court.  To get that type of player, the Warriors will need to trade either Ellis or Curry (or Lee, but he’s unlikely to bring back equal talent given his deal).  Lacob has recoiled from moving his most marketable players.  But so long as the core stays the same, we’re going to see the team struggle to lock down on opponents.  My preference would be to move Ellis, since Curry is younger, a more natural fit for his position, and likely more willing to fill the role of a number 2 player should the Warriors ever land a real superstar.  Ellis, on the other hand, views the Warriors as “his team
 
[h2]The Warriors’ Free Agent Dreams — and Salary Cap Realities[/h2]
Posted by Adam Lauridsen on December 5th, 2011 at 12:27 am | Categorized as Management | Tagged as Andris Biedrins, Bob Myers, Charles Jenkins, Charlie Bell, David Lee, Dorrell Wright, Ekpe Udoh, Jeremy Lin, Jeremy Tyler, Jerry West, Joe Lacob, Klay Thompson, Larry Riley, Lou Amundson, Monta Ellis, Reggie Williams, Stephen Curry

Tis the season for window shopping — both on Main Street USA and on the NBA free agent market.  Time will tell whether the Warriors are merely pressing their faces against the glass while the rest of the NBA gets down to business or if Lacob and company planning to open their wallets and deliver Warriors fans a gift.  But as any shopping in the modern economy knows, there are budgets, credit limits, and consequences to spending beyond your means.  Consumer confidence may be rising, but the Warriors’ cap situation still carries the baggage of past years’ spending sprees.

For Warriors fans, a burst of irrational exuberance during the free agent signing period is as much an annual event as Christmas or Hanukkah.  The names being tossed around this year may just be a new twist on an old theme, but for those in a charitable mood, there’s reason for optimism.  In prior years, Larry Riley and Bobby Rowell were leading the Warriors’ charge into the its-all-who-you-know world of NBA deal making.  Their results speak for themselves.  This year, the Warriors’ influx of fresh blood — Jerry West and Bob Myers, in particular — should elevate the front office to a new level of respectability and connectedness.  It’s true that front office execs don’t win games, but with good relationships across the League they can land the pieces that win games.  The Warriors finally have people working the phone lines that might actually have their calls returned.

The first circumstantial evidence that things might be different was Tyson Chandler’s appearance Sunday in the Bay Area.  He’ll presumably be in Oakland on Monday — the first day players can interact with coaches and executives.  That pole position is a new one for the Warriors, used to being also-rans in the free agent beauty contests.  Unfortunately for the Warriors, the wooing is only one part of the free agent process.  When it comes down to dollars and cents, the scenario once again becomes — well — very Warriorsesque.

The Warriors are currently on the hook for roughly $52.2M.  Assuming for now that the salary cap stays roughly the same (around $58M), that leaves about $6 million for a free agent signing.  To be blunt, that’s not going to deliver any of the gifts on Warriors fans’ wish lists.  Here’s the breakdown (all of these numbers will be pro-rated to factor in missed lockout games):

1.  David Lee — $11.6M

2.  Monta Ellis — $11.0M

3.  Andris Biedrins — $9.0M

4.  Charlie Bell — $4.1M

5.  Dorrell Wright — $3.8M

6.  Ekpe Udoh — $3.3M

7.  Stephen Curry — $3.3M

8.  Lou Amundson — $2.4M

9.  Klay Thompson — $1.8M

10.  Reggie Williams — $1.1M (cap hold)

11.  Jeremy Lin — $0.8M

Second rounders Charles Jenkins and Jeremy Tyler presumably will get deals, but don’t factor into the equation with cap holds at the moment.

This year’s most desirable free agents are almost exclusively big men.  Nene, Tyson Chandler and Marc Gasol will each likely command well north of $10M per year, while second tier options like Greg Oden and DeAndre Jordan might get near that amount.  If the Warriors want to clear enough cap space to get into the market for one of these bold-print names, they have a few options:

Dump a player for a smaller contract — Marc Stein reported Sunday night that the Warriors were once again looking to trade Andris Biedrins to clear additional cap space.  The Warriors could have made such a deal at the last trade deadline, moving Andris for expiring contracts and/or long-shot youngsters.  Post-lockout, the deal will be both easier and harder to make.  It’ll be easier because the new CBA will allow for a greater difference in contracts when teams under the luxury tax (the Warriors and most of the league) make deals.  Under the new deal, the no-tax teams will be able to take back the lesser of 150% + $100K or 100% + $5M.  That means another team under the tax threshold — say Toronto — could take Andris’ $9M deal while only sending back $6M in contracts to the Warriors.  Although the extra trade wiggle room helps, the post-lockout economics make the money left of Biedrins’ deal even harder to take.  The new CBA does not appear to allow trade-and-amnesty deals, so the team receiving Andris would be stuck with him on the books.

The upside to the trade-Andris approach to clearing cap space is that it doesn’t totally waste an asset (as using the amnesty provision would).  Biedrins does have some minimal value around the league, and the Warriors need more bodies on their roster.  It would be good to get something back for him while still moving towards the team’s free agent goals.  But even if the Warriors’ package Biedrins with another rotation player, the likely cap savings with this approach will be in the $3-4M range.  That would leave the Warriors with roughly $10M to sign a free agent — unlikely to be enough to land Chandler or Nene.

Amnesty Biedrins — Early word out of the Warriors camp was they’d be hard-pressed to amnesty Biedrins this year, but if Chandler or Nene seem open to the Warriors’ advances, I have to believe that stance might change.  Although there’s talk of not wanting to help competitors by amnestying a potentially contributing player, the real danger with cutting Biedrins loose is leaving the Warriors with only Udoh, Amundson and the totally raw Tyler as center options.  A verbal deal with a free agent center — contingent on clearing more cap space — would eliminate that risk.  Under such a best-case scenario, the amnesty is no longer cutting a potentially contributing player loose for nothing.

The projected cap savings from using the amnesty on Biedrins would give the Warriors around $15M total — likely enough to sign either Chandler or Nene (if that’s not enough, the Warriors should run away from what will end up being a far too rich contract for a good, but not elite, player).  The other variation on the amnesty scenario would be for the Warriors to trade Biedrins, saving potentially $3M in cap space, then amnesty Bell, securing another $4.1M.  This two-step move would give the Warriors around $13M in cap space — likely near the sweet spot for both Chandler and Nene — and bring back something for Biedrins (rather than just sticking Lacob with a chunk of the tab while he plays for another team).

Trade someone to the Cavs or Nuggets — LeBron and Carmelo may have left destruction in their wakes, but they also left their prior teams with massive trade exceptions.  The Cavs have a $14.5M exception that will likely expire — pending CBA negotiations — 11 days after the free agent period opens.  The Nuggets have a huge $17.1M exception that will likely have a few months left on it.  Either team could swallow the deal of Biedrins (or even Lee) while not being required to send back anything in return.  This type of deal would have the same cap implications as using the amnesty provision, but wouldn’t cost Lacob and company a cent in future contract payments.  The Warriors would likely have to sweeten the pot with something — a task still made complicated by all the contingencies Larry Riley added to the first-round pick traded to the Nets for Marcus Williams — but a combination of cash, second rounders and a prospect (Jenkins or Tyler) might get it done.  The Nuggets are unlikely to do the Warriors any favors, since they’ll also be in the hunt for Nene, but the Cavs were linked by multiple sources to the Warriors at the trade deadline.  Those talks were supposedly “put on hold
 
Jazz receive the Warriors' 2012 first-round pick, via Nets (Marcus Williams trade) (top 7 protected in 2012 and 2013, top 6 protected in 2014. If not received by 2014, Jazz will instead receive Warriors' 2014 and 2016 second round picks)






They couldn't give up last year's pick?  The 2012 draft is much, much deeper than 2011.  We would have picked someone better than Thompson...











 
Originally Posted by JapanAir21

Well, he's interviewing with them tomorrow, he's a known Niners fan, so I wouldn't read TOO much into it, but it's a good sign for yall, obviously.
Ahh alright, never knew he was a Niners fan. Haha.
 
Originally Posted by What up

Jazz receive the Warriors' 2012 first-round pick, via Nets (Marcus Williams trade) (top 7 protected in 2012 and 2013, top 6 protected in 2014. If not received by 2014, Jazz will instead receive Warriors' 2014 and 2016 second round picks)







They couldn't give up last year's pick?  The 2012 draft is much, much deeper than 2011.  We would have picked someone better than Thompson...













I wanted Kawhi Leonard at that time, but I have faith Jerry West knows what he's doing
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Honestly, I think I've become ok with the fact that this team isn't good. Anything up is just a plus for me. Never get let down when you have low expectations
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Originally Posted by JJA89

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just a heads up

thanks for the heads up. anyone know if ticketmaster takes paypal?


and a quick question about paypal, if someone sends me the money as a gift but they want to use another address to ship to, am i at risk?
 
Chandler grew up and played high school ball in Cali so he might factor that into his decision to play here. If we get him I would be happy.
 
I swear to God you belong on my ignore list ...

If Chandler is going to leave a championship team it'll be because we offer to grossly over pay his $$#. Not because he went to high school in COMPTON.
 
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