Yes, the Warriors should be allowed to withhold Kristaps Porzingis's $20 million. It isn't close, and it isn't cruel. Golden State is withholding his salary on the grounds that he isn't rendering services, and the plain truth is that he isn't. You don't get paid NBA money to be unreachable.
Porzingis was ruled out to open training camp in late September with a vague "health issue" the team kept private and called indefinite. On the Sunday before camp proper, he called GM Mike Dunleavy, said he was still dealing with the lingering impact of a problem that's bothered him for nearly two years, and took an indefinite leave. He hasn't played a game this season. The Warriors opened at the Lakers on October 21 and listed him as "not with team." They'd already changed his status from "general illness" to that colder phrase, and Anthony Slater put it bluntly: his time away could no longer be called an excused absence.
Then came Spain. Around late October, Porzingis surfaced in Marbella for dental work, posing for a cosmetic dentist who shared the photo with a caption calling him a champion. Multiple outlets read the work as veneers. His team was on the road. That's the image that flipped this from sympathetic to suspicious. A player can be genuinely unwell and still have torched his own benefit of the doubt. You can't disappear on the people paying you and then turn up grinning in another country while your teammates play, offering nothing more than a vague post about getting better and better, and still expect the money to keep flowing. Bobby Marks pegged what the no-show costs him at $218,341 per game. He isn't even disputing the missed checks.
A real illness should be treated like an injury under the rules, and the players' union could fight withheld pay on exactly that principle. If this were a man rehabbing in the training room with doctors' notes stacked to the ceiling, that argument would have teeth. It doesn't apply to someone who has removed himself from the building and limited contact to two people in the organization. The CBA ties pay to rendering services. He's rendering none. That's the deal every player signs.
None of this makes Golden State a pure victim. They handed Porzingis a two-year, $40 million contract this summer knowing his history: roughly 90 games missed across the previous two regular seasons, a recurring mystery ailment that first flared after a respiratory illness with Boston in early 2025. They structured the second year with only $3 million guaranteed, the move of a front office that saw this exact scenario coming and built the trapdoor in advance. It's cold, competent planning, and it's the reason they can withhold pay while keeping the contract intact to shop before the February 11 deadline. They knew what they were buying.
The optics got brutal when you look at who replaced him. Rookie Yaxel Lendeborg already dropped 37 points on 13-of-19 shooting, the most by a Warriors rookie since Stephen Curry in 2010, and after an 0-3 start the team won five straight through November 2. A 23-year-old on a rookie deal is outplaying a $20 million absentee at a fraction of the price. The Warriors moved on without him while he was abroad.
For the record, the internet theory that he had HIV or AIDS is garbage, and Porzingis himself knocked it down. Nobody needs to diagnose him to judge this. The facts that matter are the ones he controls: he left and stopped communicating, then got photographed enjoying himself somewhere else. The 31-year-old is reportedly leaning toward ending his NBA career, and at this point that might be the kindest outcome for everyone.
The Warriors are being prudent, even a little ruthless, and they're entitled to be both. Porzingis made the easy call for them the moment he decided a dentist in Marbella was worth more of his time than a phone that connects to San Francisco.
