Why Moses Moody, Gui Santos’ Warriors contracts have such high value, importance

Old age and a hefty price tag are watching the Warriors crawl to the NBA play-in tournament for the fourth time in the last six seasons. Jimmy Butler will be 37 years old in September, and Steph Curry is days away from turning 38. They’re still the Warriors’ two best players, and both currently can’t help them because of injuries that have derailed the season. The two also are slated to be two of the highest-paid players in the entire NBA next season.Curry’s &dollar;62.6 million contract tops all players for the 2026-27 season, and Butler’s &dollar;56.8 million contract ranks 10th. They easily are the oldest players that occupy the top 10. For how much that Batman and Robin duo will make, the Warriors also now have two of the best bargain contracts in the league between two 23-year-olds, Moses Moody and Gui Santos, both of whom will turn 24 prior to next season. “In the immediate, and going into next season, they need cheap contributors,” Keith Smith, who contributes to Sportrac, the largest online professional sports contract resource, said to NBC Sports Bay Area. “They need that – guys who can contribute while on valuable contracts, because obviously, they’re very expensive and they’re very likely to be very expensive.”Take the Warriors’ improbable win against the Denver Nuggets two weeks ago on Feb. 22 as a main example. The Warriors in that win were missing more than &dollar;170 million in salary between Curry, Butler, Draymond Green and Kristaps Porziis, and still found a way to somehow beat a title contender two days after trailing by 34 points to the Boston Celtics. Moody led the Warriors with 23 points and made four threes while also leading their starting five with seven rebounds. Santos scored 17 points on 6-of-7 shooting and was 2 of 3 from three, adding five rebounds and a season-high seven assists. Santos signed a three-year, &dollar;15 million contract extension on Feb. 28. On the season, he’s averaging relatively small numbers of 7.3 points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game. But since Butler’s season-ending torn ACL on Jan. 19, Santos has been one of the Warriors’ best players, averaging 13.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.5 steals per game while shooting 53.1 percent from the field. It was an emotional adjustment for everyone to recover from Butler’s injury. Santos scored three, five and seven points the first three games after losing Butler, and since has scored in double figures in 15 of the Warriors’ last 17 games. Almost immediately after he inked his new deal, the contract already looks like a steal. “That contract at &dollar;5 million, maybe about &dollar;5.5 million in the final year, it’s just a really good value contract,” Smith says. “And if Gui continues to improve, so much the better, right? They’re going to have him on this really great value deal. It’s very similar to what Deuce McBride did with the Knicks a couple years ago, which was signing what looked like a very team friendly contract, and it turned out to be. So for that reason, I guess I’m a little surprised. “We don’t generally see extensions for a relatively little amount of money. But I think for him, this is locking in &dollar;15 million in money when he’s made comparatively little in his first couple years in the NBA. This is a good opportunity for him to lock in on that as well.”By signing Santos now, the Warriors avoided going through restricted free agency with him. Santos has said he didn’t want that as an option, but Warriors fans know as well as anybody the complications of restricted free agency after the Jonathan Kuminga headache of last summer. “He feels like an &dollar;8-to-10 million player for me with the fact that he is a competitive defensive player. He’s been lights out as a shooter. He’s shown steady improvement for the last couple of seasons,” Smith said. “That’s where you’re kind of looking at guys who have good size on the wing, play really hard, competitive defensively and can knock down shots, then that’s generally somebody that’s more in the &dollar;8 to &dollar;10 million range. “I don’t think you would have got quite as high as the non taxpayer MLE (midlevel exception), which is going to be about &dollar;15 million next year, but yeah, somewhere in that range of &dollar;8-to-10 million would have felt about right, but factor in restricted free agency and it makes sense to take the &dollar;5 million AAV now.”The &dollar;4.6 million Santos is set to make next season currently ranks 235th in the NBA. Santos spent his entire first year in the G League. He now hands down has one of the best value contracts in the NBA. “As long as he stays in the rotation, yeah, without a doubt,” Smith said. “Anytime you can get even 15 to 20 minutes a night for anything under &dollar;5 million, that’s absolutely a value contract, and that’s where they’re at. And when you’re getting that for a guy who’s not still on a rookie scale contract or something like that, that’s even better at that point. This is really, really good value.”The &dollar;12.5 million Moody is making next season ranks 137th in the NBA, one spot behind Brandon Clarke. That’s the same Brandon Clarke who has played two games this season because of two different injuries, missed the end of last season because of the injury that affected the start to this season, and played only six games in 2023-24 after recovering from tearing his Achilles in March of the 2022-23 season.Moody, unlike his 2021 draft class mate, avoided restricted free agency and signed a three-year, &dollar;39 million contract in October 2024. On Monday, Moody missed his third straight game because of a wrist sprain he sustained eight days ago diving for a loose ball against the LA Clippers. That game also was his ninth straight scoring in double figures and 20th in 21 games, plus his 35th start of the year. Moody is a key to the team’s defense and averaged 12.2 points with a 41.1 3-point percentage, which ranked second on the Warriors, during that stretch.First was Santos at 42.1 percent. But he was doing so on 3.1 3-point attempts per game, compared to Moody’s 6.3.“He’s going to be a regular rotation guy, real contributor, and you have him for under the non taxpayer MLE amount,” Smith said about Moody. “That’s huge.”Teams are built around star-level guys like Curry and Butler. In Butler’s case, he’s coming off a bad injury at an older age and likely won’t return until after the All-Star break. Green has a &dollar;27.7 million player option and is assuredly going to opt in before he opts out. The three of Curry, Butler and Green make up &dollar;147 million next season, and the projected salary cap is &dollar;166 million.Porziis is on a &dollar;30.7 million expiring contract. They could try and bring him back on a smaller deal, or let him go and free up the non-taxpayer MLE to use. Al Hoford has a &dollar;6 million player option, De’Anthony Melton has a &dollar;3.45 million player option, and Brandin Podziemski is rookie contract extension eligible. There will be players on the minimum, and a draft pick in the late teens will have a cap hold between &dollar;4 and &dollar;5.5 million. Middle-range contracts like Moody and Santos become extremely valuable. If nothing, they’re good trade pieces. They allow you to explore and add on the trade and free-agent market while still having them in-house. Moody and Santos are more, making sense on spread sheets and on the court in Warriors jerseys. Then there’s beyond next season. Moody and Santos also are the only Warriors under contract going into the 2027-28 season.Becoming relied on in the present only has made them more valuable for the Warriors’ future as two of the best contracts in basketball.“That’s the optionality of having those two guys, because they’re not just value contracts, but they’re value contracts that give you actual on-court production, which there are times when it feels like I’m a soulless transaction number robot, but being able to actually play, yeah, kind of important,” Smith says.Download and follow the Dubs Talk Podcast

Why Moses Moody, Gui Santos’ Warriors contracts have such high value, importance

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