Yahoo Finance Warriors hope Kelly Oubre wants to stay with team next season: We want 'him in our future plans'
The Golden State Warriors want Kelly Oubre Jr. to sign with the team again this summer, and general manager Bob Myers tried to make that point clear when they opted not to trade him ahead of Thursday’s deadline despite “high-level” interest around the league.
Whether he can make that happen, though, isn’t entirely up to him.
“[Oubre has] done a good job of just playing basketball,” Myers said Friday, via ESPN. “And those are conversations we’ll have. I can’t, per the rules, promise anything, but we like Kelly and we’d love to be able to see him in our future plans, but that’s four or five, six months away, and we’ll see what happens with us and obviously it takes two. So that decision will be made down the line.”
Oubre has averaged 15.2 points and 5.8 rebounds so far this season, his first with the Warriors — who acquired him from the Oklahoma City Thunder in a trade before the season. Oubre is in the final year of a two-year, $30 million deal.
Oubre: ‘I can offer a lot more than coming off the bench’
Oubre, though he’s started all season, would likely return to the bench in favor of Klay Thompson next season — as Thompson is expected to return after an Achilles injury. Oubre, 25, sounded like he didn’t appreciate that possibility when speaking to reporters Thursday night.
"I can't speak for the future, brother," Oubre said, via ESPN. "You keep asking me questions like I'm a psychic. But at the end of the day, I'm growing, I'm honing in on my skills in this league and I can offer a lot more than coming off the bench, so at the end of the day, this is my life. I can't tell the future. Only God can."
Yet despite the speculation surrounding possible trades or him bolting elsewhere, Myers said he’s happy with how Oubre has acted with everything this season.
Hopefully, Myers said, that feeling is mutual.
“I think a lot of people thought he might be available [at the trade deadline],” Myers said, via ESPN. “But we value him too, as evidenced by not trading him … He handled it very well. I think our actions spoke to how we view him.”
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