While the Warriors will not have to deal with the dreaded “repeater tax” this season, it has loomed over their moves during the off-season and what the front office will choose to do moving forward.

Like the luxury tax, which I broke down last week, the NBA’s repeater tax works by making high-priced teams even more costly to maintain rather than explicitly prohibiting any moves.

The threshold for becoming a repeater taxpayer is very high under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. A team must be taxed that season and have paid the luxury tax in at least three of the previous four years. Put a different way, the season in question must be at least the fourth time in the last five years (including that season) that the franchise has paid the luxury tax.

In Golden State’s case, that stringent standard helps slow down their escalating costs. Because they needed to clear salary cap space to sign Kevin Durant, the Warriors have been a taxpayer in only one of the last three seasons: 2015-16.

That means the earliest that ownership would have to shoulder the additional repeater burden would be 2019-2020, the team’s scheduled first season in the Chase Center. While a matter of perspective for owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, that timing could work out well because they should be taking in substantially more revenue at that point.

The repeater tax fits cleanly in the structure of the luxury tax, with the same $5 million tiers and escalating per-dollar increases each time. This CBA simply adds an extra dollar for every tier as the mechanism for affected teams.

For example, the first tier ($1 to $4,999,999 over the luxury tax line) requires normal luxury tax teams to pay $1.50 for each dollar they are over the luxury tax, but repeater teams have to pay $2.50.

Considering the high-tier costs of the regular luxury tax, it may appear at first blush that the repeater tax is small and overblown. However, remember that it comes on top of both the luxury tax and actual salaries paid without the franchise receiving any additional value.

While the Warriors will not pay the repeater tax during the upcoming season, it can help quantify the burden involved. For 2017-2018, Golden State is expected to have a total team salary just over $135 million, which produces a luxury tax payment of $30.3 million and a total player cost of $165.7 million.

All of those elements would still be in play if the Warriors face the repeater tax along with an additional charge of $16.1 million, the amount they are over the luxury tax line. So that $165.7 million figure jumps to $181.8 million without adding anything to the team on the floor for that extra money.

The $50,000 partial guarantee to a training camp invitee from last week would cost the Warriors $252,500 if they were hit with the repeater tax, instead of $212,500 with only the regular luxury tax.

Even though the dollar increase stays the same regardless of the tier a team is in, it certainly creates more daunting bills for repeaters that are already incredibly expensive. For example, a repeater team that is $20 million into the luxury tax will be paying $65 million on top of its player salaries. A team that is $25 million over that threshold will be looking at $88.8 million in extra expenditures.

There are teams and owners who will consider that kind of expense worth it, but it should be easy to see why owners of consistently pricey franchises often try to find a way to reduce or eliminate that extra burden.

That said, the Warriors are in a different place than almost any other team in NBA history. With two championships already during this run and with more opportunities in the present and future, they appear to be “worth it” right now.

However, the seemingly inevitable repeater tax bill will come due later on, potentially after this group has peaked. That timing could end up being very significant in a few years. In 2020-2021, if the key players return, all four of the Warriors’ current All-Stars will be on contracts they signed after the salary cap spike.

The youngest, Draymond Green, will turn 31 before the start of those playoffs. That season would be ownership’s fourth consecutive year of paying the luxury tax and second dealing with the repeater tax. Stable financial footing in the Chase Center will help and this team could still be competitive enough to justify that level of spending, but a clear-eyed vision of that future is helpful — especially since most, likely all, of that All-Star quartet will still have more years under contract beyond 2020-2021 if they choose to stay.

The repeater tax is still a distance away. The soonest the Warriors can pay it is 2019-2020. But the specter of massive long-term spending could impact how they approach free agency in 2018, most notably with Patrick McCaw.

If you have any Warriors or salary cap questions for a future piece, e-mail [email protected]