Do the Golden State Warriors need Kevin Durant? That question seems to underlie this week's flashpoint stemming from Durant and teammate Draymond Green arguing in the huddle and locker room over Green's decision not to give Durant the ball at the end of regulation in Monday's overtime loss to the LA Clippers.
When the Warriors decided to suspend Green one game for his actions, they sent the message -- whether intended or not -- that they favored Durant, who can become an unrestricted free agent again next summer and has been unwilling to commit to staying with Golden State. As the Warriors organization weighs how to treat Durant over the next 8½ months, his importance has to be part of the calculation.
Would Golden State be favored to win the championship without Durant? What kind of impact would his departure have on the Warriors' cap flexibility? Let's break it down.
Imagining Golden State without Durant
Let's flash-forward to July 2019 and say Durant has signed elsewhere. How does the Warriors' roster look? Presuming that Klay Thompson returns as an unrestricted free agent, that would give Golden State eight players under contract: starters Green, Thompson, Stephen Curry and Damian Jones and reserves Jacob Evans, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and Alfonzo McKinnie.
As long as Thompson returns, the Warriors won't realistically have enough cap space to bring back DeMarcus Cousins, also an unrestricted free agent. Because Cousins will have played only one season in Golden State, the Warriors are limited to offering him a 20 percent raise -- a one-year deal for $6.4 million -- using non-Bird rights. Creating cap space to offer Cousins more money than that is tricky.
Even without Durant's salary, Golden State would be holding on to Thompson's $28.5 million cap hold. To create more room, the team would need to waive Livingston, stretch the $2 million guaranteed portion of his 2019-20 salary and trade either Green or Iguodala. Even then, dealing Iguodala and renouncing the rights to all the other free agents (including rotation reserves Jordan Bell, Quinn Cook, Jonas Jerebko and Kevon Looney) would give the Warriors an estimated $10 million or so in space -- probably not enough to be competitive on a long-term deal for Cousins.
So the safest bet is to assume that a 2019-20 Golden State team without Durant would look a lot like the pre-Durant teams with Curry, Green and Thompson as the core. If the Warriors did waive Livingston, they would possibly have the opportunity to use the non-taxpayer midlevel exception (estimated at $9.2 million) to add wing depth. Let's say they sign Tyreke Evans, who reportedly met with them last summer before Cousins became available, and bring back their free-agent reserves. Here's how that rotation would project using the multiyear, predictive version of ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM):
RPM would peg the 2019-20 Warriors without Durant as a borderline top-five team on both offense (that projection would have ranked fourth among teams this year) and defense (fifth), with an average projection of 53 wins. That would put them fourth in this year's projections, not including the actual Warriors projection, and within striking distance of the top: After Golden State's 60.3 projected wins, no other team had more than 55.
If the idea of Golden State as anything but one of the league's very best offenses with Curry sounds far-fetched, keep in mind how much the Warriors have struggled to score without Curry and Durant on the court the past two-plus years. In nearly 500 minutes during the 2017-18 regular season, according to NBA Advanced Stats, they posted a 98.2 offensive rating when both Green and Thompson played while Curry and Durant sat. That would have ranked last in the league over the course of the season by a wide margin.
There's also the matter of age, which would start to take a toll on Golden State's core. Curry will turn 31 in March, Green and Thompson both turn 29 in the spring, and sixth man Iguodala will be 35 in January. Although Durant (30) is a similar age, the presence of so many stars has helped the Warriors mitigate the effects of heavy mileage because they can all share the load.
Would Golden State be favored without Durant?
On the plus side, if healthy, the Warriors would undoubtedly be a better team during the playoffs than during the regular season. Not only would Steve Kerr be able to extend the minutes of his veteran stars at that point, but also Golden State's playoff experience would offer a proven advantage over younger challengers to the throne. I'd favor the Warriors over any Western Conference foe as they stand now.
That last line is key, since much could change with rival teams before next October. Whether Golden State would be favored would depend in part on where Durant goes if he leaves, as well as whether other free agents re-sign (most notably Jimmy Butler, Kyrie Irving and Kawhi Leonard) and how the Lakers, in particular, utilize their max-level cap space next summer.
It's a testament to how good the Warriors were before adding Durant -- they won the 2014-15 championship and a record 73 games during the 2015-16 regular season -- that we could even contemplate the possibility of them losing one of the league's best players and remaining championship contenders. However, the fact that they wouldn't necessarily be favored without Durant might explain why a franchise that aspires to remain light-years ahead of the competition would want to do everything possible to make sure Durant re-signs.