Is David Lee or Andre Iguodala More Expendable for Golden State Warriors?
At some point in the not-so-distant future, the Golden State Warriors must sacrifice a pricey veteran in order to keep a constantly improving prospect around. Unless they want to bite a major luxury tax bullet, that much is a given.
What remains uncertain is just which veteran they would be willing to part with: David Lee or Andre Iguodala. It's a tough call on either side, but one they will have to make as ultra-valuable glue guy Draymond Green hits restricted free agency at season's end.
Green's price tag seems to be rising by the second. The 24-year-old swingman is posting career highs across the board, including 13.4 points, 8.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists, a 46.2 field-goal percentage, a 36.4 percent splash rate from distance and a 15.7 player efficiency rating.
And he's someone who doesn't even do his best work on the stat sheet.
"He's in a lot of ways our heart and soul and just plays with such passion at both ends," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said, per Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group.
Green isn't going anywhere—which means either Lee or Iguodala almost certainly is.
"Lee is due $15.5 million in 2015-16," noted Bleacher Report's Howard Beck. "The Warriors have nearly $50 million committed to four others: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Bogut and Andre Iguodala. Something has to give."
| Klay Thompson | 24 | $15,501,000 | $16,663,575 |
| David Lee | 31 | $15,493,680 | N/A |
| Andrew Bogut | 30 | $12,000,000 | $11,027,027 |
| Andre Iguodala | 30 | $11,710,456 | $11,131,368 |
| Stephen Curry | 26 | $11,370,786 | $12,112,359 |
These five contracts alone would put the Warriors at more than $65 million for next season, and that doesn't account for the money they need to fill out the rest of their roster. Something has to give, indeed.
More specifically, someone almost certainly has to go.
Golden State could decide it's willing to foot a luxury tax bill in 2015-16 with the knowledge that the league's new media rights deal could skyrocket the salary cap for the 2016-17 campaign. Grantland's Zach Lowe reported the cap for that year could fall "somewhere in the $90 million ballpark."
That should get the Warriors out of tax range as quickly as they entered it. But they have never paid the tax before, so they might not welcome it now even if it might amount to a one-year hit.
Despite the fact Lee (hamstring) has missed all but seven minutes of the Dubs' historically significant 21-2 start, Iguodala might come off to some as being more expendable. While Lee has simply missed most of the action, Iguodala has been responsible for some disappointing box scores during his first stint as a sixth man.
He is scoring (6.9 points), distributing (2.6 assists) and shooting (43.7 field-goal percentage) at the lowest levels of his career. His previous worst player efficiency rating was the 13.5 mark he set during his rookie season of 2004-05. This year, his PER has plummeted to 9.6.
His contract runs a year longer than Lee's, which could make a difference if the Warriors want to play a major role in the 2016 free-agent frenzy.
Iguodala's skill set also lacks a real uniqueness for this roster, and in some ways, almost feels a tad redundant. Kerr's commitment to ball movement limits the overall impact of Iguodala's individual creativity. Iguodala is not one of the team's better three-point shooters, and his struggles at the foul line (team-worst 48.6 free-throw percentage) have stripped away a lot of his aggressiveness.
The 6'6" swingman gives the Warriors a long, athletic, disruptive defensive presence. But Golden State has plenty of those in similar sizes: the 6'7" Green, 6'7" Thompson, 6'7" Shaun Livingston and 6'8" Harrison Barnes.
However, this is not a redundancy. In fact, it's part of Golden State's brilliant design. As ESPN.com's Ethan Sherwood Strauss explained, the Warriors have built their league-best defense around their mid-sized, adaptable defenders:
"The watchword is 'versatility.' You’re starting to hear that term a lot from Golden State’s players and coaches. Kerr used the V-word when explaining his team’s 15th straight victory: 'Our versatility, defensively, our ability to switch blows up a lot of actions out there. We go small a lot, but we’re never truly small because we have a lot of 6-7, 6-8 guys. That’s really the key to our team.'
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The Warriors switch a lot on defense, which can expose different teams to brutal mismatches. But since the Warriors boast so many long, savvy defenders, they can not only get away with switching, but also leverage it into a massive advantage. Teams don’t know when the switch is coming, and when it does, screens are evaded, and offensive sets die.
Kerr has helped the Warriors find a really good offense, but this group wins games on the strength of its great defense.
They rank first in defensive efficiency (95.2 points allowed per 100 possessions) and first in field-goal percentage against (41.1). They also play an opportunistic style, which has yielded the league's most blocks (6.5 per game) and seventh-most steals (8.5). Combine those live-ball turnovers with Golden State's willing passers and open-court finishers, and you have a formula that has produced the NBA's most fast-break points (19.4), per TeamRankings.com.
Iguodala may not give the Warriors a lot of things they would otherwise lack, but he helps bolster this team's greatest strength. His experience and late-game poise also help combat this group's most damning problem: those 16.3 turnovers per game, tied for fourth most in the league.
In other words, he makes a major impact on this team. That impact can just be hard to find if you don't know the right place to look.
"What Andre does for us isn't really reflected in how many points he scored," Kerr explained, per Leung. "... You think about what he does for us defensively, the versatility, the leadership, he's probably our best player in terms of decision-making. When we need to settle down, we go to Andre, and the game settles."
Lee, on the other hand, would add some different elements to this attack.
He was an 18-points-per-game scorer just last season. He has snatched at least nine rebounds a night in seven of his last eight seasons. He has a track record of consistent production most on this roster lack and an offensive skill set unlike any on this interior.
"He gives us a flow, no matter who he's out there with, the ball moves," Kerr said in early November, per Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News. "We have a finisher inside with him. We're more threatening in the paint when David plays."
The problem is the Warriors may not need the type of low-post skills he possesses.
Golden State averages 309.9 passes per game. Of its 107.6 points per game, 59.7 are created by assists. Ball movement has become such a critical component of this offense, and Lee could potentially disrupt that flow.
He is a willing passer and one of the more gifted ones at his position. His setup skills aren't the issue. Where the Warriors have to worry about Lee is with his inability to keep defenders away from the basket and out of passing lanes. There is such a slim margin for error with this style, and it would lose a lot of its punch if cutters and slashers no longer leave room to attack the basket.
Lee has been tethering himself closer to the rim over the course of his tenure in Oakland. During his first season with the Dubs (2010-11), only 59.0 percent of his field-goal attempts came within 10 feet of the basket. By last season, that number had climbed up to 82.1.
And that move may have come more by necessity than choice. His conversion rates from 10 to 16 feet (39.0) and 16 feet to the three-point arc (35.7) were among the worst of his career.
Marreese Speights has proved the type of impact a jump-shooting big man can have on this offense. More than comfortable letting it fly from mid-range, the 6'10" reserve has posted 12.0 points in only 16.7 points a night.
If Lee still had that shot in his arsenal, he could slide into that role and provide a stronger presence on the glass than Speights. But Lee doesn't have it—or didn't last season, at least—so the Warriors aren't quite sure how they plan to use him.
"To be honest, we're still trying to find out (what his role will be)," general manager Bob Myers told USA Today's Sam Amick. "... Rebounding, right? Second-chance opportunities, post-scoring, post-passing, running the offense through him in the high post."
It almost sounds like a Bogut-Speights hybrid, only minus the main items that make those players so important to this team: Bogut's rim protection and Speights' shooting.
The Warriors can use what Lee brings, but they are clearly doing just fine without those skills. Take Iguodala out of the mix, and this defense would have one fewer versatile option with which to frustrate an offense.
Lee is the more expendable of the two, particularly within this system. But that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be moved at any point this season.
As Hoop's Darryl Howerton explained, Golden State could create an optimal minutes allotment by simply keeping all of its current players around:
"Picture the Warriors’ first- and second-strings upon Lee’s return: Bogut-Speights-Ezeli at center (48 minutes); Lee-Barnes-Green-Iguodala-Klay Thompson taking all the minutes at 2-3-4 (144 minutes); Stephen Curry and Shaun Livingston at point guard (48 minutes). That’s the Spurs’ recipe for success: 10 players playing 240 minutes a night. I would think a Gregg Popovich disciple like Kerr would want to follow this blueprint to a T.
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Given Bogut's constant bouts with the injury bug, it makes some sense keeping as many bigs as they can.
However, if someone is willing to take Lee's contract off their hands without sending a bad one back in return, it would be a move the Warriors have to consider. Unless they find a sudden willingness to shoulder a tax bill, shedding this salary could be a key part of retaining what has all the makings of an elite roster.
This team has championship-level two-way balance as it is without having Lee involved. If a deal surfaces that does not disrupt the rest of this core and allows it to stay together for years to come, the Warriors should pull the trigger as soon as they can.
Sooner or later, they'll need to move on from either Lee or Iguodala, anyway. And they have already proved which one they can live without.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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