The Warriors and Kevin Durant agreed to a discounted rate last offseason — two years, $51 million with a player option after one season — so the team could afford to keep other pieces in place such as forward Andre Iguodala and backup point guard Shaun Livingston. The nine-time all-star made much less (around $9 million annually) than he could have had he signed a max contract. Heck, he took a $1.5 million pay cut from the season before, which is something you don’t see too often from a star player in his prime.
But the Durant Discount Days are coming to an end, and there will be no such markdown for the Warriors this offseason. According to ESPN’s Chris Haynes, the reigning NBA Finals MVP plans to opt out of his contract so he can work out a new deal with Golden State that will pay him a salary more in tune with his actual worth.
This was the plan all along, so long as things didn’t go south between Durant, 29, and the team he joined in 2016. They haven’t: Even with teammate Stephen Curry laboring through injuries that have limited him to 51 games, the Warriors still coasted to the NBA’s third-best record.
“Financially, obviously, what I wanted to do last year, it made sense,” Durant told the Athletic in March. “Well, the last two years, it made sense to do the one-year deal. I’m sure here soon I’ll want to sign a long-term deal just to feel stable. But I’m enjoying every moment of it, so I’m not trying to look too far down the line.”
Haynes says there isn’t much of an incentive for either Durant or the Warriors to seek out yet another reduced-price deal and that Durant has a number of options in front of him: Another two-year deal at an increased salary with a player option after the first year, opening up the possibility of Durant signing the biggest contract in NBA history in 2019; a four-year max contract worth about $158 million; or a three-year contract with an opt-out after the second season, creating the chance of an even bigger contract plus a no-trade clause down the line, when the salary cap is expected to increase.
Whatever Durant decides to do, it almost certainly will result in him playing in the Bay Area next season, unless …
“Well, actually,” Durant joked to the Athletic, “I want to wait to see who wins the championship and whoever wins that, that’s who I’m going to sign with.”
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