Warriors' five best trade assets going into vital offseason
These are Golden State's best chips at the negotiating table.
Editor's note: This story originally was published on Sept. 15.
The Warriors don't want to make a habit of what happened in the 2019-20 season.
Golden State was behind the eight ball after losing Steph Curry for most of it and not having Klay Thompson for all of it, but 50-loss seasons haven't been the norm for a while in Warriors land. Repeating the feat in 2020-21 is a non-starter with Curry, Thompson and Green all in their 30s and the clock ticking on their primes.
The Warriors need to upgrade their roster, and trading can provide the quickest path to do so. These assets are Golden State's best chips at the negotiating table.
Outside of 2024, the Warriors own their first-round pick every year for the foreseeable future. The "Stepien rule" means Golden State won't be able to trade its own 2023 or '25 first-round selections, but every other pick is fair game for a trade.
Future first-round picks, even from championship-aspiring teams who will pick in the mid-to-late 20s, are necessary to grease the wheels on big deals. The Los Angeles Lakers, for instance, sent three future firsts to the New Orleans Pelicans as part of the Anthony Davis trade.
The Warriors' 2020 pick will get teams to listen, but first-round picks in, say, '22 and '26 will sweeten the pot.
Paschall's performance as a rookie was one of the Warriors' few legitimate positives this past season, which culminated in him being named to the NBA's All-Rookie First Team. But Golden State can't land a truly significant piece just by trading picks. Any team the Warriors call likely would want Paschall in a deal.
The 23-year-old won't make more than $1.8 million against the cap for either of the next two seasons. His qualifying offer, per Spotrac, would be fewer than $2.3 million in 2022. Considering the coronavirus pandemic's to-be-determined impact on the salary cap, that kind of cost certainty for a capable, developing contributor is even more valuable. Paschall's inclusion, then, could help a deal get over the line.
Why is Paschall on this list, and not, say, Thompson, Green or even Andrew Wiggins? Each has far more time and money left on their contracts, for one, and each player is older than Paschall. While trading one of those three veterans might have to happen to make the money work in some trades, none of those three would be considered the centerpiece of any deal. Paschall wouldn't, either, but he also isn't paid like one.
As colleague Brian Witt noted earlier this summer, the Warriors can use the $17.2 million traded player exception they got from trading Andre Iguodala in order to acquire a player whose salary is equal to or lesser than that value. Comrade-in-content Josh Schrock laid out some of the players whose salaries would fit, and Golden State can land some nice players by pairing the exception with its 2020 first.
The TPE, like the other assets listed so far, won't be enough on its own to land an impact player. But teams are going to cut costs and clear cap space while citing the pandemic's effect on revenues, and trading into the exception means they wouldn't have to take a contract back.
No team has a bigger TPE than the Warriors do for trading Iguodala last summer. That's going to carry plenty of weight in trade talks.
The T-Wolves' pick next year becomes the Warriors' if it's not in the top three of the lottery. With 2021 set to have a much better draft class than 2020 and Minnesota's path to playoff contention -- even with the No. 1 pick this year -- looking difficult, this selection looks like the most important part of February's Andrew Wiggins-D'Angelo Russell swap.
A likely lottery pick in a loaded draft is a big deal, but it's not the Warriors' best asset because of the uncertainty that lies ahead. Will there be seasons to further evaluate top prospects? If there are, will said prospects even play?
Those questions, and countless others, will be on the mind of teams asking for Minnesota's pick.
The Warriors will select No. 2 overall when the draft is held Nov. 18. Yes, this draft is devoid of a consensus No. 1 pick, but that will make whichever prospects are still available all the more intriguing.
Chances are teams will have a different No. 1 player on their draft board than whom the T-Wolves ultimately select. The Warriors, then, are well-primed to take advantage.
Golden State will need to use some, if not most (or even all) of the previously mentioned assets to land a player capable of vaulting the team back into the NBA's elite. Make no mistake about it, though: This piece is the most important one.
