Outside wrote:Re: Draymond and Barnes, I'm late to the discussion, and lots of good points made, but will add my two cents.
I may have missed it, but I don't think anyone mentioned that the Warriors offered Barnes a four-year, $64 million extension after their first title in 2015, and he turned it down. That same offseason, Klay signed a four-year, $70 million extension and Draymond signed a five-year, $82 million extension (almost the same per year as they offered Barnes, one extra year).
That was a generous offer to Barnes, but he was looking at being a big fish in another pond rather than a smaller fish in the Warriors pond. Barnes refusal to sign the extension caused some friction with the other core players, especially after Klay and Draymond agreed to their extensions. They thought Barnes was going against the spirit of the group, where everyone was taking a little less and doing what they could to keep the core together. Barnes made it look more about himself at the expense of the team.
It looked even worse in the next offseason when Barnes held out for max free agent money after a horrible postseason -- 9.0 pts, 5.1 reb, 44.6% EFG, 47.4% TS, and a particularly awful finals.
As for Draymond taking less with his recent extension, there are mitigating factors that mean less money with the Warriors makes financial sense.
-- We won't know unless he plays elsewhere, but there's good reason to believe that the Warriors are the best fit for him, possibly by a wide margin.
-- His ancillary income will likely be much greater with the Warriors, both because of the Silicon Valley connection and remaining associated with the Warriors success.
-- Having seen multiple players go down with serious injuries, including two on his own team, it can be prudent to take the money now rather than hope for more later. He just saw Cousins lose a huge amount of money after getting injured in New Orleans.
Great points.
I have to admit to a feeling of exasperation toward Barnes.
This is the same guy who said he was returning to North Carolina for a second season to help his brand. He spent much of his early career trying to think of half-baked ways to optimize his financial success after he became the next Michael Jordan and it was really distasteful watching him fail to ever really figure out the game of basketball. So many times I found myself thinking "Dude, if that's all you can do, no one will want to wear your shoe. STFU and learn to play if you want a brand, otherwise just quietly invest your money.
And I'll acknowledge it maddening to see the Sacramento deal given this. The Dallas deal I absolutely expected. Barnes got incredibly lucky that GS context made him look like a success who might (somehow) still bloom into a star with more primacy, but it was a given someone would pay big money in a desperate prayer for legitimacy. Sacramento though? To me that's prospect/contract inertia. Take Barnes, make him a minimum contract guy without a history of hype, no way Sac sees the way he played last year and says "Here, have 80 million dollars." Such a contract wouldn't even enter into the conversation. It wouldn't occur to anyone to offer that kind of money. To see Barnes benefit from him being so drastically overrated to start his career years after his underachievement has become a fact set in stone after seeing what his attitude back when he was overrated, it's annoying to me.