Playing ‘What If?’ with Harden and Thompson

Klay Thompson erupts for 52 points, including a record 37 points in a single quarter. The Warriors are a league best 36-6. And all I can think of is how the Warriors could have had James Harden, and how Thompson could be playing for the Thunder right now.

(Insert record scratch sound here)

Bear with me for a moment. This requires some backstory.

Coming out of the 2011 lockout, the new collective bargaining agreement granted each team an amnesty provision that would allow the team to waive a player and remove him from their salary cap and luxury tax calculations completely, even though the player would receive the remainder of his guaranteed salary. Around these parts, this was known as the AMNESTY PERKINS provision.

The Warriors finished 36-46 after the 2010-11 season, but had some nice things going for them. New ownership. New coach. Good young players such as Monta Ellis, David Lee and Stephen Curry. But management wanted to get away from the Don Nelson/Keith Smart train of basketball thought and get serious about making the Warriors a contender. That included adding Front Office Gawd Jerry West as a consultant.

The Warriors coveted restricted free agent DeAndre Jordan. Most observers expected the Clippers to match any offer sheet given to Jordan, but the Warriors weren’t scared off by that prospect. However, they lacked the salary cap room to give him the necessary contract.

Enter the Amnesty Provision.

This concept was practically designed to get rid of players like Andres Biedrins. The once-promising Latvian big man had an injury that no surgery could fix: ruptured confidence. He was once such a promising prospect that I’d hoped Sam Presti could land him somehow. But by 2011, he was a slumping and ineffective player with three years and $27 million left on his contract.

Instead, the Warriors went another direction and amnestied guard Charlie Bell, who had only one year and $4 million left on his deal. It was a head scratcher, but somewhat understandable. $4 million is less than $27 million. That’s a whole lot easier to justify setting on fire. And the Warriors may have held out hope of fixing Biedrins, and also may have wanted to protect themselves in case they didn’t land Jordan.

As expected, the Warriors signed Jordan to an offer sheet that the Clippers quickly matched. So much for the best laid plans of mice and men. The Warriors instead signed Kwame Brown to a 1-year deal worth $7 million instead. That was working out fairly well, but then Brown tore a chest muscle nine games into the season and was done for the year.

The Warriors eventually found their prized big man by trading for Andrew Bogut near the trade deadline. The deal sent Ellis and Brown, along with former lottery pick Ekpe Udoh, to Milwaukee for Bogut and Stephen Jackson. One problem though: Jackson played for the Warriors before and had no desire to rejoin them. Two days later, the Warriors re-routed Jackson to San Antonio for Richard Jefferson and a first round pick.

Here’s one big catch: Jackson’s contract was up at the end of the 2012-13 season. Jefferson’s deal was an additional season and $11 million more than Jackson’s.

So having said all of that, what does this have to do with James Harden?

Bill Simmons mentioned in a 2013 column that the Thunder and Warriors talked about a Harden-for-Thompson swap in the summer of 2012. Tim Kawakami of the Mercury News gets into specifics here. Even though the two players could have been swapped for each other straight up, the Warriors had a payroll issue. They simply could not afford to acquire and extend Harden (y’know, luxury tax and stuff). They could only do this if they could somehow offload Biedrins or Jefferson. Presti understandably wanted no part of either player (plus the deal would have become much more complex). Dumping either player on another team was problematic for the Warriors at the time. The total cost of making everything happen to acquire Harden was probably too much.

Additionally, the Thunder reportedly wanted a good first round pick as well, but Golden State didn’t have one to offer. The Warriors owed a first round pick to Utah, a pick that was traded to the Nets in 2008 for guard Marcus Williams (it eventually became part of the Deron Williams trade). The pick would have gone to the Jazz in 2012, but the Warriors successfully tanked late in the season and managed to keep their protected pick (which became Harrison Barnes). The Warriors now owed the Jazz their 2013 first round pick instead. Because league rules prohibit dealing away consecutive future first round picks, the Warriors couldn’t offer their 2014 pick, either. The best pick they could offer was in 2015, or three years away at the time.

It’s easy to use hindsight and critique the Warriors for some of the decisions they made, but it all worked out for them in the end. In 2013 the Warriors managed to unload both Biedrins and Jefferson onto the well-under-the-cap Jazz, forking over multiple future picks in the process. In the same deal, the Warriors acquired Andre Iguodala. And oh yeah, they kept Thompson despite several opportunities to move him (Kevin Love, hello!).

So what if the Warriors had used the amnesty on Biedrins in 2011? Or what if the Warriors had kept Jackson and his shorter, more dumpable contract instead of dealing him for Jefferson? What if they hadn’t tanked successfully enough and had to surrender their 2012 pick to Utah? Maybe the two teams agree to a deal of Harden for Thompson and a 2013 first round pick.

“What if?” scenarios are such fun.