Getty Draymond Green and Donte DiVincenzo of the Golden State Warriors.
Free Agency will likely see the Golden State Warriors lose Donte DiVincenzo this summer. According to HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto, DiVincenzo will not be returning to The Bay for a second season.
“Donte DiVincenzo won’t return to the Golden State Warriors, I’m told,” he said via the “HoopsHype Podcast.” “He’s earned a pay raise. He may double what he could’ve gotten from Golden State. The [New York] Knicks are one of a handful of teams interested. When it comes to DiVincenzo, he’s competing in this market for similar money from mid-level exception teams with Bruce Brown and maybe Max Strus.”
Price will be a key factor in where DiVincenzo winds up playing basketball next season. The Warriors have their hands tied financially and won’t be able to pay the 26-year-old guards as much as some other teams that are interested.
DiVincenzo walking away could serve as a costly loss for the Dubs. The former Villanova standout was a key piece of Golden State’s rotation, appearing in 72 games last season, starting in 36 of them. He provided the Warriors with a reliable 9.4 points, 3.5 assists, and 3.4 rebounds per game, while shooting 43.5% from the field and 39.7% from beyond the arc.
The Warriors signed DiVincenzo using their taxpayer MLE last summer. His contract was for two seasons, with the second including a player option, which he declined to become a free agent this year.
If DiVincenzo was to join the Knicks, he’d be reuniting with college teammates Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, who he won two NCAA National Championships alongside in both 2016 and 2018.
Warriors ‘Wanted Out’ of Jordan Poole Contract
On top of DiVincenzo, the Warriors parted ways with another rotation guard last week, trading Jordan Poole to the Washington Wizards in exchange for Chris Paul.
In the days following the trade, The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami revealed the reasoning behind the Warriors’ decision to trade the 23-year-old.
“What’s clear to me after a few days of checking around is that this all began when the Warriors decided that Poole was an extraneous and inefficient member of their roster,” Kawakami wrote. “That was the precipitating issue. The Warriors wanted out of the $123 million deal they gave Poole only eight months earlier because his play last season didn’t meet that value, especially given their extreme luxury-tax pressures. They knew he wanted a bigger role and they knew that almost certainly wouldn’t happen as long as Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson were on the team.”
Steve Kerr Calls Warriors’ Trade a ‘Very Positive Shift’
Kawakami got to publish a piece about a conversation he’d had with head coach Steve Kerr. Kerr discussed the trade with him, calling it a “very positive shift.”
“We’re going to be a lot different. The last thing I’m going to do is say anything about a team that just won a championship a year ago and then fought through a difficult season. Made a helluva run at the end of this year. I’ve loved this group that we’ve had the last couple years,” Kerr told Kawakami. “But the biggest point is that we sensed we needed a shift. Didn’t mean we needed an overhaul, but we needed a shift of some sort. I think everybody in the organization sensed that. And it feels like we’ve made a pretty significant shift without giving up our identity and our sense of who we are as a team. I think, all in all, it’s a very positive shift.”