Unless you were under a rock on Monday, you know by now that the Golden State Warriors are making a real run at LeBron James and Anthony Davis — a coup keeps becoming more plausible, if not probable. First, on Monday, Draymond Green declined his $27.7 million player option for the 2026-27 season. Then, on Tuesday, James told the Lakers that he’s not coming back and will instead land elsewhere in free agency. Immediately, the Warriors were viewed as the frontrunners for LeBron.

So why is the Green contract decision important? Because now Green can sign a contract that pays him more over the long term but less than the $27 million annually, with any savings able to be redirected to LeBron as they aim to get him at a $15 million annual number to fit into the non-taxpayer midlevel exception slot. 

It’s a tight fit because to pay out the non-taxpayer mid-level exception, your total team salary cannot exceed the first-apron line, so when news broke that the Warriors re-signed Kristaps Porziņģis to a two-year, $40 million deal, it became a question of whether Golden State could make the math work. 

The answer is yes … with a possible Moses Moody caveat. 

How the Warriors can create money for LeBron and Draymond

As noted by salary-cap guru Yossi Goslan, who hosts the Third Apron podcast with CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn, the Warriors are currently $32.5 million beneath the first apron with $176.5 million devoted to the following 10 players: Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Porziņģis, Al Horford, Moses Moody, Brandon Podziemski, Gui Santos, Will Richard, first-round pick Yaxel Lendeborg and second-round pick Lajae Jones. 

You have to roster a minimum of 14 players, meaning the Warriors would have to add four more players for less than that $32.5M number. So let’s do some math. Let’s say the Warriors give LeBron the $15.1 million NTMLE. That’s 11 players with $17.4 million left to pay Green and two more veteran-minimum deals at $2.4M each. So Green takes a little over $12 million in the first year with the max 8% increases — let’s say a three-year deal for around $40 million, just for argument’s sake — and the math works. 

Would Green accept that low a salary? Maybe. But he wouldn’t have to if the Warriors moved off some other money. Which is where Moody comes in. Moody is on the books for $12.5 million next season, which he isn’t likely to participate in as he recovers from a horrific knee injury. That money could be absorbed into someone else’s midlevel exception or cap space, or the Warriors could trade for a less expensive player with each dollar saved able to be routed to Green. 

If the Warriors incentivized a team to take Moody into their space by attaching a future draft pick, his full $12.5M goes off the books and could be replaced by a vet minimum to fill the roster spot. That’s north of $10M extra the Warriors would have to give to Green or split between him and James. 

But wait, that doesn’t include Anthony Davis. How do they get him? From a money standpoint, that part’s easy. They trade Jimmy Butler’s $56.8 million next season for Davis’ $58.5 million. The Warriors would have to absorb the extra $1.5 million on Davis’ deal, and that would count toward this final number they’re trying to stay under, so in the event of a Moody trade they would now have about $8.5 million more to give Green in the first year. 

That would take him up near $20 million annually, the same deal that Porziņģis just got. That seems reasonable, but again it would necessitate trading Moody without taking the same, or preferably any, money back. It’s not a huge task if the Warriors will attach a pick. Then they attach more picks to get Davis. And they sign LeBron into the NTMLE, and we’ve got a deal. 

So… will it happen?

Obviously, it won’t be as easy as that sounds, but there are a lot of ways to skin this cat. Hell, LeBron could just say I’ll play for $10 million next season if Draymond wants a little more, or they could give either one of them a low first-year salary with a player option in Year 2 that they can opt out next summer and then potentially re-sign for more.

The point is, the math on the Warriors pulling off this LeBron-AD coup is still very much viable. It’s a little bit trickier after the Porziņģis deal, but if you think the Warriors aren’t well aware of the number it would take to re-sign Green and still have a satisfactory amount left for LeBron, and didn’t factor that in before they handed that deal to Porziņģis, you’re wrong. 

Everyone with a card in this hand knows pretty much exactly what it would take to make this work, and if they didn’t think it could happen, Green wouldn’t have opted out, and the Warriors would not have signed Porziņģis yet.