The Warriors have the NBA’s second biggest payroll but only have a 28-26 record to show for it.
Steph Curry has also hurt himself again and is out indefinitely which deals a huge blow to their already shaky title defense.
Draymond Green’s player option is coming up so he could enter free agency over the summer, but if the Warriors are planning something big before the trade deadline on Thursday, he doesn’t know anything about it.
“If I’m being honest, it feels like one of those deadlines where everyone is expecting everything to go haywire and not much is going to happen (across the league),” Draymond Green told The Athletic. “That’s what I think is going to happen. For me, I’m in this locker room with these guys I play with. We’ve never been a team that moves much at the trade deadline. So I’m not going into this deadline expecting some big moves or something. I don’t know. If it happens, it does. But I’ve been here 11 years and I think we’ve made moves two or three times. We haven’t done much.”
A no-brainer for Golden State would be to part ways with James Wiseman who is barely playing and is owed $9.6 million this year and $12.2 million next year, meaning that teams like the Spurs, Pistons and Jazz could acquire him without sending anyone in return.
They would save themselves a whopping $51 million this year and about $85 million next year (approx $131 million dollars would be saved in salary and tax all up) if they were to trade Wiseman.
What Golden State should do is trade Wiseman to the Spurs for Keita Bates Diop. The Warriors have been yearning for a player in the mould of Otto Porter who played a big role in the teams’ championship run last season.
Bates Diop is a 6-foot-8 wing that can switch one through four on defense and do a little bit of everything on offense, in a limited role for the Spurs this season he’s putting up 7.7 PPG on 50% FG while shooting 35.9% from three.
The best part is he’s an expiring contract, so if things don’t work out for the second half of this season – GSW and KBD can go their separate ways.
It is clear the Warriors need to act before the deadline to either save some money or save their season. By trading Wiseman for Bates Diop, they can achieve both.