When Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors this summer, it left the franchise scrambling a little bit. In order to clear the necessary room to sign Durant, the Warriors needed to trade Andrew Bogut and renounce the free agent rights to Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli. They did that by sending Bogut to the Dallas Mavericks and making Barnes and Ezeli unrestricted free agents. That meant this team needed to find a cheap center or risk running with Anderson Varejao and rookie Damian Jones in the middle.
Luckily for them, Zaza Pachulia was willing to turn down money in order to join the Warriors. He told Anthony Slater of the Mercury News that while money is important, he was willing to leave a "pretty significant amount" of it on the table when he signed a one-year deal for $2.9 million with Golden State. He wants to win a championship and knows when he's a free agent in 2017, he can probably recoup some of that money.
"Of course money is important," Zaza says. "Very important. Important to everybody. If I said it wasn't, I'd be lying. Especially because it's not like I've made hundreds of millions of dollars in my career."
Which is an important factor. Pachulia is 32. In his profession, careers don't last past 40. Zaza's value has never been higher. But it can decline in a flash. He's never made more than $5.2 million in a season. He could've comfortably eclipsed that in the market this season. But he declined. He took a financial risk. He chose the winning situation.
"A pretty significant amount," Pachulia said when asked the exact dollar amount he left on the table. "Don't want to get into the details. But a pretty significant amount. I'll be a free agent next year, so we'll see again. But first of all, I'm not thinking about next year. I'm all in on this year. That's the reason why I sacrificed financially. It's not because of next summer. It's because of this season."
He's not the first person to leave money on the table to join a better situation. And the Warriors probably have the best situation in the NBA. His new teammate David West, who also took a small deal to help fill out the Warriors' depth, left over $10 million on the table a year ago when he declined his player option with the Indiana Pacers and signed a small one-year deal with the San Antonio Spurs.
The Warriors are Pachulia's fifth team of his career. He started with the Orlando Magic, has had two different stints with the Milwaukee Bucks, and also played eight seasons with the Atlanta Hawks somewhere in between. Last year, he played with the Dallas Mavericks, averaging 8.6 points and a career-high 9.4 rebounds in 26.4 minutes. He also received a lot of random All-Star buzz when it looked like he had a chance of being voted in as a starter. Eventually, the votes just weren't enough but it was an incredible thing to ponder while it seemed possible.
