The Chris Paul trade was supposed to be a clean pivot for the Warriors. Instead, it became another example of a front office trying to protect the future and ending up hollowing out the present.
The chain reaction really starts in the 2022 offseason, when Golden State had just won the NBA title and faced two big contract calls. Jordan Poole was extension-eligible after a breakout third season, though the Warriors didn’t have to move immediately because he still had one year left on his rookie deal. Andrew Wiggins, meanwhile, had only one season remaining, which made him the more urgent extension case since letting him drift to unrestricted free agency carried more risk.
Then came the punch.
Days before those decisions were made, Draymond Green punched Poole in practice. Some will point to that as the moment the dynasty cracked, and it could have stood alone as a story in this series.
The Warriors eventually handed Poole a four-year extension worth up to $140 million and gave Wiggins a four-year, $109 million deal the same day. That left them with five players making more than $20 million in average annual value and immediately raised the question of how they would fit Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green into the same financial picture down the road.
For the moment, though, Poole was still on a bargain salary. He made just $3.9 million in 2022-23, and the hope was that he would keep building off what he had shown in the 2022 playoffs.
He didn’t.
Instead, Poole slid backward into a worse version of himself. His shooting numbers dropped, his turnovers climbed and his effort on defense looked even more detached.
Golden State felt it. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Warriors were 7.4 points per 100 possessions worse with him on the floor.
In the final five games of the second-round loss to the Lakers, Poole shot 13-of-43 overall and 1-of-17 from three.
That was the backdrop for one of Mike Dunleavy Jr.’s first major moves after being named Warriors GM. He sent Poole, Ryan Rollins, Patrick Baldwin Jr., a second-round pick and a heavily protected first-round pick to Washington for Chris Paul.
On paper, the logic was obvious. Paul was the better player. Nobody was expecting a 38-year-old Chris Paul to push the Warriors back into championship favorite territory, but he was a much more reliable organizer for the second unit than Poole had become.
The contract mattered too. Paul was on a $30.8 million expiring deal, and there was also a $30 million nonguaranteed salary for 2024-25 that no team was going to pick up, which made him functionally an expiring contract. That made him the kind of salary slot the Warriors could use later, especially if they combined it with Jonathan Kuminga and draft capital in a star chase.
At the same time, the Warriors’ cap sheet was already crowded with expensive commitments. Green and Wiggins had just started four-year deals, Curry was on a max, and Thompson was entering the final season of his five-year, $190 million contract. It was also reported that Golden State offered Thompson a two-year, $48 million extension that he declined.
That’s where the Paul move was supposed to buy flexibility. If the Warriors traded him for a star, they could still re-sign Thompson and keep their expensive core cycling forward. There were even rumors about Pascal Siakam, and a package built around Paul, Kuminga and picks would have worked for Siakam’s $38 million salary.
But Siakam ended up with the Pacers, and Paul stayed put through the deadline.
That was the tell. The Warriors had not been using Paul as a bridge to another major swing. They had been clearing long-term money, which meant Poole was essentially gone for nothing.
It was the first time Joe Lacob and the front office so plainly chose cost control over a real shot at title contention, driven by fear of future apron penalties.
Golden State still fought its way out of a 19-24 start and finished 46-36, but the comeback left them drained. They looked spent in a 24-point loss to the Kings in the No. 9 vs. No. 10 play-in game.
Then the rest of the dominoes fell. Paul signed with the Spurs early in 2024 free agency, and days later Thompson and the Warriors agreed to a sign-and-trade that sent the four-time champion to the Mavericks.
In the end, the cap-space move didn’t even preserve the core. Thompson left anyway. The Warriors could have taken a swing like Siakam and still had a path to extend him if they already knew Thompson was gone.
Instead, not moving Paul for a better player wiped out their chance to contend in 2024 and helped set up a rough first half of the 2024-25 season.
What it cost after that gets harder to track. The Butterfly Effect game gets messy fast.
Still, there’s one clear alternative path worth noting: if Golden State had used Paul’s contract to bring back a star, it would have had a way to keep Wiggins too. Instead, Wiggins became part of the Jimmy Butler trade.
Maybe the Warriors still wouldn’t be better off today if they had made the other move. But it would have been a better try. Letting Paul walk for nothing fits a larger pattern - avoiding future picks, hanging onto younger players too long, and trying to outsmart the moment instead of attacking it.
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