It seems like every halfway-decent Warriors player is on the trading block except for Damion Lee (and Draymond Green too, because no team would risk trading for him unless they have a collection of All-Stars ready to buoy him). If you’re a productive player on the Warriors, chances are that you’re going to get traded for cheaper contracts or just straight-up draft picks.
Lee’s situation is a bit unique. He has an extremely cheap contract for this season and the two after that, so the Warriors (whose cap situation is the stuff of nightmares [if your nightmares happen to be about basketball financials]) have no reason to trade him. They’ll get cheap production out of him while the team’s superstars eat up most of the cap space. Paying a dude a million bucks to give you 11 PPG per game is a great deal even if it’s not the most efficient 11 PPG per game that you’ll ever see.
If you re-read the above paragraph, you’ll notice that it forms a cogent synopsis of the Warriors’ current financial situation and its implications for Lee. That’s the exact kind of thing that a real NBA journalist would get paid real money to write. What I’m saying is, The Athletic needs to hire me right now and I can generate that kind of intelligent, informed content all day every day. Also, I can photoshop players so that it looks like they’re crosseyed.