The Golden State Warriors are reportedly undecided on how to handle Chris Paul's non-guaranteed $30 million salary for the 2024-25 season.
"We're looking through everything," Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy told reporters Monday. "A lot of options are still on the table in terms of keeping Chris. Obviously there's a scenario where he gets waived ... but I'd say everything is open."
Warriors owner Joe Lacob, who has long been willing to pay exorbitant luxury tax fees to keep the team competing for championships, has been open about wanting to reduce payroll.
"Our Plan 1, or 1A, is that we'd like to be out of the tax, and we think that we have a way to do that. That kind of is the plan, not just under the second apron," Lacob told Tim Kawakami of The Athletic. "I'll tell you why that's important because the truth is, we need to be out of the tax two years out of the next four in order to get this repeater thing off our books. We don't want to be a repeater. It's so prohibitive, not to say we wouldn't do it if we had to, but you've gotta look at the downside of doing that. So, that's the plan, is to try to do that, and we think we can keep our team together and retain even the players that are, we might be able to bring players back at different numbers and so on."
Waiving Paul would allow the Warriors to potentially duck the tax and still have enough money to re-sign Klay Thompson. However, Thompson appears determined to test free agency after failing to reach a long-term contract extension with the Warriors during the regular season.
Waiving Paul without a guarantee of Thompson's return risks both players leaving without much hope of replacing them. Golden State would unlock the full midlevel exception by being a non-tax team, but Paul and Thompson are both far more valuable than whatever the Warriors could get at that number.
The Warriors could find a trade partner and then guarantee part of Paul's salary to make a deal work, but that will need to happen before his June 28 guarantee date. Golden State could also ask Paul to push his guarantee date into July, though it's unclear if he would be willing to do so. Paul would have several suitors on the open market if he hits free agency.
