Stephen Curry’s two-year, $116 million extension changed the way people are looking at the Warriors’ 2027 books, and the math is already getting messy.
Depending on which assumptions you use, Golden State’s cap-space outlook has been floated as somewhere around $80 million or a little below $50 million. The spread comes from how different projections handle the same moving parts: player options, cap holds, roster charges and a few decisions the Warriors can’t fully control.
Start with Kristaps Porzingis. He is listed with a $20 million player option for the 2027-28 season, and that part is real.
But there’s another wrinkle: if he opts in, only $3 million of that deal is guaranteed until it becomes fully guaranteed on July 7, 2027. For cap purposes, that makes more sense to treat as a $3 million penalty if the Warriors move on.
Al Horford and De’Anthony Melton are in a different category because they also have player options for 2027-28. Golden State doesn’t get a vote there, so the cleanest assumption is that both stay on their current path.
Of course, Horford could retire and Melton could opt out to chase a bigger deal, and if that happens, the Warriors’ cap room grows. Swapping out their salaries for two incomplete roster charges would add $10.6 million to the projection.
Those roster charges matter because the league requires teams to carry 14 players on standard contracts. For every spot a team is short, it gets hit with a $1.45 million charge.
Then there’s Podz. If the Warriors don’t extend him before this season begins, he’d be a restricted free agent next offseason, and in theory Golden State could let him walk and use his 2027 cap hold of $17 million to pad the number.
But that doesn’t look like a realistic path. The expectation is that the Warriors would prioritize keeping the 23-year-old guard, so some projections assume Podz stays while everyone else leaves.
Under the leanest setup - Melton and Horford declining their options and everyone else renounced - the Warriors would have just four players under contract and $98.5 million in salary commitments. With the projected cap line at $176 million, that leaves $77.5 million in cap space.
If Horford and Melton both return, the Warriors’ commitments rise to $109.2 million, which cuts the room down to $66.8 million.
That’s still not the full picture, because Podz’s number is another fork in the road. We don’t know his actual 2027-28 salary, but his cap hold would be $17 million if he remains unsigned heading into free agency. Using a starting salary of $20 million instead brings the Warriors down to $48.2 million in cap space.
The most accurate projection, though, is the $66.8 million figure. That one gives Golden State the most control over the outcome, because it assumes Horford and Melton come back.
If a projection comes in a little lower than that, it may be factoring in the Warriors using their 2027 first-round pick, which would likely come in somewhere between $3 million and $6 million in first-year salary, and/or guaranteeing Will Richard’s non-guaranteed $2.5 million deal.
Even with all the moving pieces, the bottom line is simple: the Warriors can create enough room to offer a max contract.
The bigger question is whether that plan is worth chasing. The view here is that the top-end free agents in 2027 probably won’t be there anyway, which makes a different approach look better - re-sign Podz and use the cap space on multiple quality players.
Or, even more aggressively, the Warriors could abandon the whole thing by trading for Trey Murphy III at this year’s trade deadline.
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