Why didn’t JaVale McGee get paid?

On July 27, JaVale McGee re-signed with the Golden State Warriors for the veteran’s minimum. Why did the 29-year-old center not get a better offer?

There is little for JaVale McGee to complain about these days. He just won an NBA championship. He has made upwards of $50 million in his career. As of July 27, he will make at least $2.1 million more.

A month ago, McGee returning to the Golden State Warriors seemed unlikely. The team only had the taxpayer mid-level exception ($5.2 million) and minimum contracts to offer non-bird free agents such as McGee, who was expected to command more elsewhere. If he could not top $5 million annually, he could certainly do so over a couple seasons.

It did not work out that way. While McGee coming back for minimum money was not a popular prognostication, a closer look (albeit in retrospect) makes it appear almost inevitable.

Whether Shaquille O’Neal‘s incessant teasing of McGee was against the spirit of the NBA — and particularly big men — fraternity, it was not unfair. Media members have every right to critique players, and players have every opportunity to prove that criticism wrong. At least, the lucky ones do.

McGee’s lack of court awareness and over-ambitious play style was a cheap target for O’Neal, but for years, it was also detrimental to the teams he played on. Despite Steve Kerr‘s assertion that O’Neal hurt McGee’s career, that latter issue is why McGee went unsigned for much of the 2015-16 season. NBA teams do not tune in to Inside the NBA for help with player evaluation.

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An invitation to Warriors training camp gave McGee a terrific opportunity, one that he deserves credit for capitalizing on. In order to make the team, stay on the team and earn consistent minutes, he realized he needed to take all of the garbage out his game.

He succeeded in removing the truly stinky stuff. Gone were his midrange jumpers, his open court dribbles and his patented piggyback rides. However, McGee’s 2016-17 season was less of a reinvention and more of a first step.

He still plays atrocious pick-and-roll defense, consistently demonstrating a lack of spacial awareness. He shows too high, recovers too late and lets ball handlers get to the middle of the floor.

McGee’s interior defense is mixed. He’s capable of impressive erasures due to his tremendous tools, but his timing, form and discipline are all poor.

Drivers know how eager he is to leap. They plan accordingly, duping him with pump fakes, hesitations and floaters. He is frequently left swatting air, while the ball falls into the basket behind him. When opponents do miss, his all-out block attempts leave him out of rebounding position.

It will take more for McGee to become Rudy Gobert than simply unlearning bad habits. But he is a physical freak akin to Gobert. Moderate improvements to his approach would make him a plus defender.

This may sound obvious, but it’s important to note. After all, this is exactly what McGee did on the other end last season.

He has always been better on offense. Despite the horrendous lowlights, his ability to put pressure on the rim as a roll man and transition rim runner has made him a scoring threat throughout his career.

The removal of those lowlights played a major role in McGee’s 2016-17 success. He shot a career best 65.2 percent from the field by doing nothing but dunking. He turned the ball over less per minute than he had in five years, and scored 23.0 points per 36 minutes, obliterating his former high mark of 18.0.

Productive, no-nonsense pick-and-roll finishers are wanted around the league. However, there has been warranted skepticism surrounding his offensive breakout.

When sharing the court with both Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, McGee shot 74.1 percent from the field (per nbawowy). In 118 minutes without either, he plummeted to 50.9 percent.

Removing arguably the greatest offensive duo in league history had a grave effect on everyone’s efficiency. Klay Thompson dropped from 48.5 percent to 41.1. Draymond Green fell from 43.8 to 34.1.

That McGee made roughly half his shots without either MVP on the court actually looks impressive when compared to Zaza Pachulia, whose 56.2 percent with Curry and Durant became 31.6 percent without them.

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Pachulia, however, is paid to rebound, set screens, pass and play adequate positional defense. McGee does none of these things. If he cannot provide elite efficiency without superstars around him, what franchise without superstars is going to pay him?

If any team was going to offer McGee something substantially better than the minimum, it would have been one with tremendous perimeter talent. That reduced his logical market from 30 teams to seven: Houston, Cleveland, Toronto, Boston, Washington, Portland and Oklahoma City.

Houston used its salary-adding avenues for better players in Chris Paul and P.J. Tucker. Boston did the same for Gordon Hayward. Marcin Gortat and Ian Mahinmi make nearly $30 million combined for Washington, while Steven Adams and Enes Kanter top $40 million in Oklahoma City. Either team would have been crazy to spend on another center, particularly one who is worse than either guy they have. Toronto had no incentive to pay an offense-only big when it already has Jonas Valanciunas. Portland is capped out for eternity, and also has a million centers.

That left only Cleveland. The Cavs had the financial avenue (the full Mid-Level Exception) to sign McGee. They had the need, with Tristan Thompson resembling their closest thing to a lob threat. The way LeBron James passes and their shooters stretch defenses to oblivion, McGee would have feasted much like he did in Golden State.

But the Cavs didn’t have a GM, and decided that they needed to bring Kyle Korver back. So went McGee’s market, and that’s why he’s back with the Warriors.

It is a tough time to be a center in the NBA. Irresponsible spending and an evolving game has made it difficult for any one-dimensional big man to command real money.

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McGee is a special lob finisher, a great teammate and a player on the path to reinvention. The league does not believe he’s there yet, so he’ll have to take advantage of another chance to prove everyone wrong. Doing so while making a couple million dollars to play for another NBA championship? There are worse things.