Report: Warriors Already Afraid They Made Porzingis Mistake

Kristaps Porzingis missed Sunday's game against the Denver Nuggets with an illness, and he's expected to miss the Warriors' next two games as well.

Porzingis was diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, known as POTS, and it's believed the illness has been affecting him going back to at least the 2024 playoffs.

This season, Porzingis has appeared in just 18 games. He's dealt with Achilles tendinitis, so it's unclear how many of the 41 games he's missed have been related to POTS.

But it's surely disappointing that he's missing time with an illness after playing just one game with the Warriors.

On Monday, Heavy Sports' Sean Deveney wrote that the Warriors are "already afraid they're going to lose" the Porzingis gamble.

"One source said the team is, 'concerned,' about Porzingis’ health, but added, 'it was always buyer beware,' on Porzingis and that team still sees the deal as, 'one that could still work out,'" Deveney wrote.

Warriors Could Be Heading Toward Worst-Case Scenario

The Warriors desperately needed to get something of value from the Jonathan Kuminga trade.

It's possible they will end up with nothing of value.

Here are the realistic Porzingis scenarios:

1) He plays about half of the team's games and re-signs on a massive discount in the offseason. With a salary between, say, $6 milion and $10 million, his lack of availability becomes less onerous.

2) He plays about half of the team's games and signs a contract extension before the end of the league calendar year. This allows the Warriors to trade him this offseason, but note that Porzingis will have virtually no trade value, so an acquiring will want high-value draft capital attached to Porzingis to give up anything decent for him.

3) He can't fight off this illness to the point the Warriors don't want him back or even he doesn't want to continue playing.

The third would be a disaster. All things considered, the first wouldn't be a great outcome, but at this point you'd take it.

Regarding the second, using a Porzingis extension as a salary-matching trade piece would be great, but consider all that has to line up for this to work out. The Warriors and Porzingis would need to agree to a bigger contract than they would otherwise so it's more tradable—similar to what Jonathan Kuminga went through this offseason. Once they do that, they would have to find a trade that Joe Lacob would actually sign off on, which seems unlikely if multiple first-round picks are included and Giannis Antetokounmpo isn't part of the returning package.

If the right trade never comes, the Warriors would be stuck with another year of Porzingis at a high price, which would make the roster expensive enough that they might have trouble keeping their other key free agents, such as De'Anthony Melton and Gui Santos.

So the second option resulting in no Porzingis trade is probably the worst-case scenario, but lose-him-for-nothing-this-offseason option is a disaster too.

Any way you slice it, the Warriors could not have done worse with Kuminga. They waited until his trade value was at its lowest before dealing him, and now they are stuck in a tough spot with Porzingis.