Warriors COO Rick Welts: We never expected to land Kevin Durant
Right up until the moment that Kevin Durant announced he intended to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder and join the Golden State Warriors, I never thought it would actually happen. The 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player linking up with the 2015 and 2016 MVP to bolster the core of a 73-win team that came within mere minutes of winning a second straight NBA championship just seemed too far-fetched to fathom until it became the NBA’s frightening new reality. Evidently, I wasn’t alone in that assessment — the Warriors themselves weren’t so sure they could make the free-agent coup happen.
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At least, that’s what one of the highest-ranking members of the Warriors organization told CBS Sports Radio’s Tiki Barber and Brandon Tierney on Friday:
“Well, I think we had hope,” Warriors President and COO Rick Welts said on CBS Sports Radio’s Tiki and Tierney. “We, like every other team, probably didn’t think it was going to happen, and I can assure you we had no indication it was going to happen until the phone rang at 7:30 in the morning in [Golden State general manager] Bob Myers’ cabin on Lake Tahoe and Kevin called to give us his decision. I think there was a lot of screaming and yelling going on in the Myers’ cabin at that point in time.”
And, one suspects, in the homes and offices of general managers of several other teams that had hoped to secure the services of the four-time NBA scoring champion. It’s hard to imagine Thunder boss Sam Presti screaming — just look at that granite countenance! — but a Leo meme type of situation? Certainly.
Welcome to #DubNation, @KDTrey5! We're thrilled to have you be part of this organization!
— Rick Welts (@RickWelts) July 7, 2016
After noting that Durant’s addition promises nothing more than an opportunity at continued success for a team that will have to find a new equilibrium after replacing starters Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut, as well as rotation reserves Leandro Barbosa, Brandon Rush, Marreese Speights and Festus Ezeli, Welts set the sky-high stakes for the Warriors by reminding us all that the two-year maximum-salaried deal Durant isn’t necessarily a two-year deal:
“There’s no commitment from Kevin,” Welts said. “He signed a one-year contract with a player option. So I think the hope and expectation is there’s a business reason for doing that more than there is a basketball reason for doing that. We’ve got to be a place that is as good as he thought it was when he selected the Warriors over the other options that he had. I think we’re going through a really interesting time in our league. We’re all trying to figure out what the new world is going to look like.”
While Welts is 100 percent right that Durant can opt out of his deal next summer to re-enter the market and, if things don’t work out this year, pursue a better fit, it seems unlikely he’ll do that. After his introductory press conference by the Bay, Durant made it clear that he’s not interested in running back the “where will he go?” drama that trailed him all year and of feeling the pressure of making the biggest professional decision of his life once again:
Durant: “I plan on being here. I don't want to go through that again.”
— Sam Amick (@sam_amick) July 7, 2016
The question, then, will likely be how long Durant’s next deal is for, and what sort of shape it takes.
Next summer, Durant will have 10 full seasons of NBA service time under his belt, making him eligible for a maximum salary starting at 35 percent of the salary cap, as opposed to the 30 percent max that players with seven to nine years of service time can receive. With the cap projected to rise to projected $102 million next summer, the first-year max for a 10-plus-year player is estimated to be $33.55 million, according to Danny Leroux of The Sporting News.
If he follows in the footsteps of LeBron James and stay with Golden State on a one-plus-one deal, it would give the Warriors his “Early Bird rights” — a collective bargaining agreement exception that allows teams to go over the salary cap to retain free agents that have spent at least two years on their team, to offer them contracts featuring a 7.5 percent Year 1 raise rather than the 4.5 percent bump for non-Bird signings. And if he stays on one-and-one contracts until he’s spent three years with the Dubs, Golden State will have his full Bird rights, allowing Myers and company the option of offering him both the 7.5 percent year-over-year raise and a full five years on the contract, which would set him up for the most lucrative long-term payday should the cap continue to increase over the years.
However Durant would prefer to structure his forthcoming paydays, it’ll be incumbent on the Warriors to continue operating at a championship-contending level to keep him interested in sticking around. That’s the kind of challenge that Welts told Tiki and Tierney he thinks the team is built to meet:
“I do think the advantage we have going into the season is we’ve gone through two consecutive seasons by making it to the Finals, winning once and losing once,” Welts said. “We know what both feel like, so the journey is going to be a familiar one for these guys. They know what the pressure is all about. Last year, 73 wins, most wins in the history of the league. Actually, adding our playoff wins, it was the most wins for any NBA team over the course of a season ever. So they feel the pressure every night. They’ve had a target on their back all last season. I can’t imagine guys being better prepared to go into what is going to be a year of incredibly high expectations.”
Especially now that they’ll go into that year with No. 35 at small forward. Welts might not have been holding his breath for that fantasy to become reality, but now that it’s here, it’s one that he and everybody else associated with the Warriors is eagerly anticipating.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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