Warriors to Try to Sign Klay Thompson, Draymond Green to Contract Extensions
June 10, 2018
Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob is planning to offer extensions to shooting guard Klay Thompson and forward Draymond Green this summer.
"All good things cost a lot," Lacob told ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne. "We're going to try to sign Klay and Draymond to extensions this summer. They've earned the right to do whatever they want; maybe they want to wait until free agency. I can't control that. But we'll do whatever we can to keep them."
Thompson is scheduled to earn $19 million in the final year of his deal before he becomes an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2019. While the three-time champion has stated he wants to play for the Warriors for the remainder of his career, his father indicated that an extension won't be in order this summer.
"Klay definitely wants to play his whole career in Golden State and the Bay Area—there's no question about that," Mychal Thompson told 95.7 The Game, via NBC Sports Bay Area's Drew Shiller. "He loves it up there ... loves the fans.
"But let's just say that negotiations will probably continue in the summer of '19."
As salary-cap expert Albert Nahmad noted, it's not in Thompson's best interest to ink an extension right now. An extension this summer would pay out $102 million, while a max contract in the summer of 2019 could net him $187.9 million.
Green, meanwhile, is slated to net $17.5 million next season and $18.5 million during the 2019-20 campaign. Like Thompson, it stands to reason he would be forfeiting some serious cash if he re-upped now instead of waiting until he becomes an unrestricted free agent.
"We've proven that if we think we're competing for a championship, we'll be in the luxury tax," Lacob said. "No one wants to be, but we expect to be. All I can tell you is we're going to sit down and do our planning on how we're going to improve the team for the future and setting ourselves up in the future. And it could go a number of different ways."
Salary information courtesy of Spotrac.com unless noted otherwise.