If Golden State weren't taking back Artest's contract, it could conceivably make some sense, as they could supplement a core of Ellis/Gasol + some young pieces with a max free agent like D12 in the of-season. However, Artest makes this a complete non-starter, even if there weren't better value out there for Curry.
Someone refresh my memory, does Golden State have a history of making deals that don't necessarily make sense?
New ownership and a fairly new to the job GM (two years? two and half?). So it's pretty hard to tell what they are capable of.
The David Lee signing and appointing Mark Jackson as a Head Coach are the only controversial moves that I can think of that they have made so far. Jeremy Lin.
A lot of reports saying that ownership is trying extremely hard to make a major move and bring in a superstar-quality player to GSW. A little hard to believe a 31 (almost 32) year old Pau Gasol fits that bill though but maybe so (Houston sure seemed to value Pau as such).
They used the amnesty clause on Charlie Bell and not on Biedrins. That seemed strange to me; maybe the ownership wasn't willing to pay for such a large amnestied contract.
I believe the Warriors were making a statement. Reportedly, Bell showed up drunk to his DWI arraignment this offseason.
The decision to amnesty Bell instead of Biedrins was about DeAndre Jordan.
They willing to eat Biedrins' contract if it meant bringing in an established star with that new-found cap space but were unwilling to do so for D.Jordan. They thought they would be able to make a large enough financial offer to sign D.Jordan by amnestying C.Bell and waiving Jeremy Lin ... so they kept Biedrins in the hope that he could provide some value as a player (as a useful member of their rotation) and/or trade asset (as a quality player or expiring contract) down the road.
If it had of been a better player than D.Jordan that was available, they would have most definitely amnestied Andris Biedrins. But they didn't want to eat $27 million if there wasn't a clear payoff.
But yeah, back to the original point, I'd call that one a questionable decision. I thought they should have amnestied Biedrins. Too much focus on the immediate future and not enough on the life (3 years?) of Biedrins contract and the effect it would have one GSW's cap flexibility over that period.
