Donte DiVincenzo ‘glad’ he joined Warriors before new CBA goes into effect

DENVER — Donte DiVincenzo had numerous conversations last summer with coach Steve Kerr about re-establishing his value in the league after he was slow to come back from an injury. He came to the conclusion that there was no better place to do it than with the Warriors.

Golden State, already deep in the luxury tax, was able to sign DiVincenzo by using part of the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception.

But a new clause in the NBA’s pending collective bargaining agreement would’ve prevented the Warriors from getting DiVincenzo last offseason.

The NBA and National Basketball Players Association agreed late Friday night to a tentative six-year collective bargaining deal that is expected to go into effect next season. Several key issues, such as limiting the pay out of high-spending teams, including the Warriors, and load management, among others, were addressed in the new deal.

ESPN reported that the teams will lose the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception when they go over the second luxury tax apron, which is reportedly $17.5 million.

This will impact the Warriors, who are more than $39 million over the roughly $150 million luxury tax line this season, which is expected to increase next season when Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins’ extensions kick in.

Speaking before Sunday’s game against the Denver Nuggets, DiVincenzo said: “I’m glad it didn’t go into effect last year, honestly, truthfully.

“And yeah, I took less money to come here but at the same time, if this isn’t even an option, I’m in a situation where I’m deciding between teams that necessarily may not be the stepping stone of where the best opportunity for me in that situation, which it becomes tricky for not just me but a couple guys going forward because every year no matter what free agency is.”

DiVincenzo believes this change in the CBA could “be a good thing in the long run.” He suggested it will spread talent among more teams and that some young players on higher spending teams would benefit from it, noting that Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, Ryan Rollins and Patrick Baldwin Jr. could be in a better position to develop at a faster rate if they’re not playing behind veterans, such as DiVincenzo.

“It kind of spreads out the wealth, if you will, which is what they’re trying to do and level it out rather than have the top four or five teams in each conference, so I get that standpoint,” he said.

While DiVincenzo said he doesn’t “think it’s a bad thing for the league,” not all players are happy with what’s been preliminarily agreed upon.

Shortly after news about the deal, Draymond Green took to Twitter to express frustration with parts of the new deal that are meant to curb spending among top teams.

“Players lose again…. Smh! Middle and Lower spectrum teams don’t spend because they don’t want to,” Green wrote. “They want to lose. So increase their spending capabilities, just to increase them. They continue to cut out the middle. And this is what we rushed into a deal for? Smdh! Never fails.”

Green said he’d comment further on an upcoming episode of his podcast, “The Draymond Green Show.” The next episode is scheduled to drop Monday morning.

Other key elements include an in-game tournament to try to generate more intrigue in regular season-play and a mandatory minimum of games played for postseason awards in an attempt to curb the league’s load management problem.

DiVincenzo and Kerr are intrigued by the proposed in-season tournament, which could be implemented as soon as next season.

“It’d be cool to switch it up a little bit, keep fans engaged, keep teams engaged,” DiVincenzo said.

Kerr said he’ll have to see how it unfolds before giving an opinion on it.

“I understand the thinking to try to make the regular season more interesting,” Kerr said. “And so if they put it in, we’ll see.”

Meanwhile, Kerr said a 65-game minimum for players to be eligible for awards, such as Most Valuable Players, Defensive Player of the Year and All-NBA teams is a “good number,” though he admittedly hadn’t given it much thought.

“I don’t know if it’s a better number than 64 or 66,” he said. “I haven’t studied it, but it does seem like a fair barometer for a guy to win the MVP, seems like he should play more than three quarters of the season so it seems about right.”

Kerr has been a vocal supporter of load management and has previously suggested trimming the regular season down to 70 games would help make star players more available.

“As a league, we kind of want our cake and to eat it, too. We want 82 games, and we want all of our players to play every game. It just isn’t going to work that way, not with all the information we have,” Kerr said. “I was really hoping that a new CBA would have something in it that would lessen the games and make it more likely that players would be out there every night to protect the fans who bought tickets hoping to see these guys play, but wasn’t the case.”