The Warriors will pay a record $170 million in luxury tax this season.
They sound ready to spend even more in coming seasons.
This is pure envy.
It’s coming from competitive people who don’t like losing and rich people not used to getting outspent. But every team is allowed to spend like the Warriors. Other owners have just chosen not to, preferring to use their wealth in other ways. That might be a reasonable decision on their part, but complaining about Golden State is grating.
The NBA has a salary cap to limit spending. The league has luxury-tax and revenue-sharing systems that redistribute money from big-spending, big-market teams to cheaper, smaller-market teams.
If Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber want to accept the penalties that come with ginormous spending, let them.
Golden State is getting such significant backlash in part because the team keeps winning. But though paying the luxury tax is an advantage, it does not ensure success. The Knicks smashed luxury-tax records for years with extremely underwhelming results. The Warriors are doing far more right than just spending.
Which leads to the other reason they’re drawing so much scorn: They’ll tell you about it. They’ll tell you they’re light years ahead. They’ll tell you about their soaring revenue. They’ll tell you about returning to the NBA Finals despite a bold plan to plan for the future.
Those brash statements combined with winning engender resentment.
Other teams can attempt to make the luxury tax and revenue sharing more punitive. They could even attempt to implement a league-wide hard cap, though that has been a non-starter with the players’ union.
But, again, the system is already set up to curb spending unless a team is really willing to pay luxury-tax and revenue-sharing penalties. Golden State is willing.
So, these complaints really sound like sour grapes.
