Larry Riley is a sign-and-trading motherfucker. For a presumably lame-duck general manager, you can’t say Riley is going down quietly. Trading Watson was the 4th trade the Warriors have made this offseason.

As part of the deal Watson signed a 3 year contract with the Bulls worth about $10 million. This is a good deal for all parties involved—Watson gets quite a bit of guaranteed money for a backup who put up decent numbers for a team like the Warriors the past 2 years, he’s going to help the Bulls off the bench and the Warriors should not have matched that money.

It’s pretty clear that Riley feels like you should not invest heavily in bench players and this is something I agree with. The NBA is a star’s league and you need to invest in your starters first and foremost (and hopefully, by extension, your stars.) Unless you have an owner like Jerry Buss who is willing to go deep into the luxury tax to keep luxury items like Lamar Odom as a 6th man, it doesn’t make sense to give multi-year, multi-million dollar deals to bench players. Trading guys like Turiaf, Azubuike, Morrow and Watson (who will make a little less than $15 million this year combined) is sound strategy when you still haven’t really solidified a legitimate starting 5.