In order to duck under the tax level, the Warriors will have to find a way to shed $3,729,160 in salary.

This is how their salary breaks down as of now.

Steph Curry | $40,231,758

Klay Thompson | $32,742,000

D’Angelo Russell | $27,285,000

Draymond Green | $18,539,130

Kevon Looney | $4,464,286

Jordan Poole | $1,964,760

Jacob Evans III | $1,925,880

Omari Spellman | $1,897,800

Alec Burks | $1,620,564

Glenn Robinson III | $1,620,564

Eric Paschall | $898,310

Alen Smailagić | $898,310

Damion Lee | $842,327

Dead Cap | $1,425,471

Damion Lee cannot be traded before the trade deadline since he signed his contract recently and therefore has a 3-month restriction on trades, which lasts until April 14th. Dead Cap is exactly what it sounds like, so they can’t do anything with it. On top of these two facts, let’s also assume the “Big 4” are off the table. So that leaves us with the bolded players as options to trade.

Now an important thing to remember is NBA teams are obligated to carry a minimum of 14 players during the course of the regular season. However, they can drop to as low as 11 players up to two weeks at a time. With two-way players excluded from these figures, just regular roster spots.

The Warriors are currently at 13 players on their regular roster so they will already have to sign a 14th player on February 8th at the latest (two weeks after WCS trade was processed). Now on that day, they’ll have some options.

One thing they can do is sign a player to a 10-Day contract and once that contract is up, wait another two weeks to sign another one, and just continue this song and dance. It doesn’t matter if they sign a rookie or a 10 year-veteran as for tax purposes, all 10-Day contracts are counted at the 2 years of service level of $91,557.29.

The other option they have is to sign a player to a rest-of-season contract, which can be accomplished by converting one of their two-way players like they did with Lee. Once again, for tax purposes, all the ROS contracts are counted at the pro-rated 2YOS level. If they signed a player on Feb. 8th it would cost them $622,589.56.

So for any trades, the Warriors make to shed salary, they’ll have to keep in mind that for any players they trade away for a non-player asset, they will have to replace them, eventually.

What this means is that the Warriors can’t just trade away two players without receiving any players back to get under the tax level and finish the season with 11 players on the regular roster. They would have to add 3 more players to the roster, which is then more salary that counts against the tax level.

For example, if the Warriors were to trade away Jacob Evans III, Alec Burks, and Glen Robinson III for a combined salary of $5,167,008 without receiving any salary back, they would fall $1,437,848 below the tax line. However, by doing so they would also be at 10 players which is in violation of the CBA and would have to immediately get up to 11. Not only that but, they would of course also have to sign 3 other players by Feb. 8th and only two of them could be 10-Day contracts since the NBA doesn’t allow teams to sign 10-days unless the team already has 12 full-season contracts on the books.

So let’s say the Warriors complete that trade on deadline day (Feb. 6th), immediately sign an ROS ($640,901.02), then another two days later ($622,589.56), and two 10-Days ($91,557.29 each). That’s a total of $1,446,605.16 without even factoring what happens after those 10-Days expire.

What it boils down to is that any salary the Warriors trade away has to be more than the amount they’re above the tax level combined with the amount it would take to fill out the roster.

As of now, the Warriors are at $4,003,831.87 (Amount above Tax Level + 3 x 10-Days). The reason for the three 10-Days is because they can sign a 10-Day on February 8th that lasts until the 17th, when it ends wait two weeks, then sign another one for March 3rd to 12th, then wait another two weeks, then sign one more for March 27th to April 5th, and then the next two weeks takes them through the end of the season. It would be the cheapest way to go about it.

So with that thinking in mind, these are the minimum amounts of salary they need to move based on the number of outgoing players.

1 Player — $4,278,503.74 (Amount above Tax Level + 6 x 10-Days)

2 Players — $4,901,093.30 (Amt. above Tax Level + 6 x 10-Days + 1 ROS)

3 Players — $5,541,994.32 (Amt. above Tax Level + 6 x 10-Days + 2 ROS)

Trades that work without receiving salary back:

1 Player — Kevon Looney ($4,464,286)

3 Players — Jacob Evans + Jordan Poole + Omari Spellman ($5,788,440)

That’s about it.

Obviously, those aren’t the only two trades they can make, there are variations to this. They could move like Looney and Burks for $6,084,850 and get back a player for the difference of $6,084,850-$4,901,093.30 + $622,589.56 (1 ROS) which is $1,806,346.26.

But the bottom line is, no matter what they do it’s not going to be pretty and seems to almost definitely involve Looney. Which asks the question, is Looney worth $40M to the Warriors, or more specifically, to Lacob?

Hard to say, but Looney is highly regarded by everyone in the organization and everything we’ve seen from them is that they value loyalty and continuity. If anyone’s going to swallow the repeater tax bill to keep Looney, it’s Lacob.