Gauging Surplus Value Warriors Will Get from Gui Santos' Contract

The Golden State Warriors and Gui Santos agreed to a three-year, $15 million contract extension on Saturday.

It's near-unanimously being viewed as a big win for Mike Dunleavy Jr. and the Warriors front office. There's no doubt Santos is worth more than $5 million average annual value based on how he's been playing recently.

But just how much more is he worth?

Let's use Steph Noh's NBA Salary Model and then use comparisons to other players to get a sense of how much surplus value the Warriors will get from this contract.

Santos' Value via Noh's NBA Salary Model

Noh's model uses DARKO, an adjusted plus-minus metric. This metric a) gives a rating for how the player is doing this season and b) projects what rating the player will have in the next few years based on his aging curve.

According to the model, Santos has a 1.2 DARKO rating, which means he's a quality starter. So this season, he's worth $26.5 million (!). He's making just $2.2 million, which means this season he has a massive $24.3 million surplus value on his salary.

But as a 23-year-old, Santos is projected to get even better over the next three seasons, so the model projects him to be worth even more each year.

Santos is projected to be worth $31.5 million in 2026-27, $33.8 million in 2027-28 and $36.3 million in 2028-29.

So if you go by this salary model, Santos was worth a three-year, $101.6 million (!) contract. His contract has an outrageous $86.6 million projected surplus value.

Santos got a player option for the 2028-29 season, so there's a chance this ends up being a two-year contract. Even then, the Warriors are projected to get about $55 million in surplus value.

Comparing Santos' Contract to Other Contracts for Similar Players

The issue with this exercise is defining who a similar player is to Santos.

For example, do you use Santos' season-long scoring average of 6.6 points per game, or do you use his average of 15.4 points per game over the last 11 games?

It's probably most fair if it's somewhere in the middle.

We're also looking for a bigger wing who can shoot the three and defend a little bit who recently signed a contract extension around the age of 23.

We'll start with Santi Aldama. As a 24-year-old last offseason, Aldama signed a three-year, $52 million contract with the Grizzlies.

That feels like a fair contract for Aldama, but if anything, Santos is slightly more valuable than Aldama due to having more foot speed for the off-the-dribble scoring and defense.

Next is Jaden McDaniels, who signed a five-year, $136 million contract in October 2023 when he was 23 years old.

McDaniels was (and still is) a much more impactful defender than Santos, so I'd argue he was worth more at the time of the extension.

But keep in mind that McDaniels got his $27.2 million AAV 2.5 years ago. With the rising cap in the NBA, he'd get more for the exact same situation now.

So if we say Aldama was worth about $18 million AAV and McDaniels was worth about $30 million AAV, I'd argue Santos is worth somewhere in the $20 million range.

Warriors Getting Lots of Suprlus Value

A big portion of Santos' projected value is based on his last 11 games, so it's understandable that Santos would rather lock in a contract now rather than risk a decrease in value from poor play or injury.

With that said, he easily could have gotten more.

He probably would have had trouble making the $20 million-plus AAV that I'm arguing he's worth considering almost every NBA team is lacking cap space this offseason.

But I have to believe some GM would have been willing to offer most of his team's non-taxpayer mid-level exception of about $15 million if Santos continued to play as well as he has been playing recently.

So even if Santos intends to decline the 2028-29 player option and plays out only two years of this extension, the Warriors are getting about $10 million of surplus value per season for about $20 million in total surplus value.