Takeaways from Warriors' Win Over Wizards: Porzingis' Market Value Is Volatile

The Golden State Warriors (33-35) snapped a five-game losing streak, beating the Washington Wizards 125-117 on Monday at Capital One Arena.

Kristaps Porzingis had his best performance in a Warriors uniform, totaling 30 points in 26 minutes. De'Anthony Melton and Gui Santos chipped in with 27 and 18 points, respectively.

The Wizards (16-51) had their losing streak extended to 12.

Here are two takeaways from Monday's game.

Porzingis' Market Value Will Be Determined by How the Next Month Goes

The Warriors got the version of Porzingis that should draw non-taxpayer mid-level exception offers this offseason.

The raw numbers were great—30 points on 8-of-13 shooting, five rebounds, four assists, two steals and three blocks—but what was even more impressive was he scored 12 points in the final 6:36 of the game, effectively closing out the Wizards by himself.

The Warriors have Porzingis' Bird rights, so they could pay him more than $15 million and still keep their mid-level exception for someone else. But if their combined salary commitments rise into the tax, then they can only offer the taxpayer mid-level exception of about $6 million to De'Anthony Melton or whoever their top free-agent target is. And Melton will likely have a much higher market value than that.

So the Warriors and Porzingis are in a fascinating spot. The more games he misses down the stretch, the cheaper he'll be to re-sign, which could mean keeping both Porzingis and Melton. But the more games he misses might make the Warriors more shy to even offer him a contract at all—or he could retire, though there's been no speculation he'd do so. And though losing Porzingis would give Golden State a better chance to re-sign Melton, the talent void left from trading Jonathan Kuminga for a player no longer on the roster in 2026-27 would be devastating.

Porzingis has appeared in four of the last six games, and he had positive things to say about how he's feeling after the game.

The Warriors need him for the rest of this seaon and next season, but if they pay him a lot and he misses the majority of next season's games, then that would be crushing.

It's hard to predict what contact talks could look like between Porzingis and the Warriors, but more games like Monday's will certainly help the 7'2" Latvian's market value.

Santos Extension Already Looking Like a Bargain

On Feb. 28, I wrote a column about the surplus value the Warriors could be getting with Santos' three-year, $15 million extension.

At the time, I concluded he was worth almost $15 million per season, though perhaps he wouldn't have gotten an offer that big in free agency due to the fact that so many teams have no cap space to work with.

In any event, the contract looks even better now than it did two weeks ago.

Over the last seven games, Santos has averaged 17.6 points per game. He's scored at least 14 in every game in that stretch.

On Monday, he had 18 points on 7-of-10 shooting with five assists and just one turnover. His offensive efficiency was one of the main reasons he finished a game-best plus-20.

He's earned starter's minutes for the rest of the season, regardless of how healthy Draymond Green, Porzingis, Al Horford and Moses Moody are for any given game.