Melton suffered an ACL sprain during Warriors' win over Mavericks on November 12.
The Golden State Warriors suffered a huge blow with the season-ending ACL injury to De’Anthony Melton. The 26-year-old guard will undergo ACL surgery which will keep him sidelined for the remainder of the season.
Melton’s season-ending injury has raised questions about how the Warriors will navigate their roster and cap space moving forward. ESPN reporter Bobby Marks reported that the Warriors are allowed to file a Disabled Player Exception (DPE) following Melton’s injury. However, it may not be very helpful.
The Disabled Player Exception is a provision in the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement that allows teams to replace a player who has suffered a season-ending injury. The DPE grants them the ability to sign a replacement player or trade for someone who is injured or on an expiring contract.
In the case of the Warriors, with Melton’s ACL injury, the team is eligible to file for the DPE, which is typically worth 50% of the injured player’s salary. For Melton, whose annual salary stands at $12.8 million, the DPE would be worth $6.4 million.
On paper, this sounds like a good solution to help ease the loss of Melton, but the situation is far more complicated than it seems.
Also Read: Golden State’s ‘3-point warriors’ struggling with free throws
While the DPE would provide the Warriors with an extra $6.4 million to work with, the team’s financial situation puts major restrictions on how they can use this exception. Golden State is currently $534,000 below the first apron of the tax threshold.
Because the Warriors are so close to the first apron, they are not allowed to exceed this threshold.
This means that they cannot use the $6.4 million from the DPE to sign another player unless they clear out enough salary to fit the cap.
In other words, even though they technically can sign someone to replace Melton, they cannot go over the hard cap and must find ways to shed salary before making any moves.
This leaves the Warriors with very little flexibility to add players to their roster unless they find a way to offload salary from another player or make a trade.
To further complicate the situation, Melton is set to become an unrestricted free agent in July. This means that his cap number will remain on the Warriors’ books for the remainder of the season, even though he will no longer be contributing on the court.
The Warriors will not be able to replace his contract with a more signing until the offseason, and the DPE will not apply to future years.
The Dubs currently sit at the top of the Western Conference standings with an 11-3 record. Given their strong start, the Warriors may not feel the immediate need to look for replacement via the Disabled Player Exception. However, more injuries could leave them in a difficult position.
Image Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images
NBA 
