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Can you imagine what the last few seasons in Warriors-land would’ve been like if Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, or LeBron James was the team’s central figure?
I’m not trying to criticize the other three incredible, championship- and MVP-winning players. Every situation is different. Great players can force changes because they’re great. But teams take on the personalities of their best players, and sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s chaotic, especially as a superstar ages.
Let’s just run through a specific comparison:
• In the last 12 seasons, starting with Kerr’s Warriors arrival in May 2014, Curry has obviously been only with the Warriors and he’s only had Kerr as his coach.
• In the same span, Giannis has been with the Bucks but has had six (if you count new hire Taylor Jenkins) full-time coaches.
• Durant has been on five teams (obviously one of those being the Warriors from 2016-2019) and had seven full-time coaches in that span.
• And LeBron James has been on only two teams but has had six full-time coaches since the start of the 2014-15 season.
Would it surprise you to learn that Curry’s Warriors championship in 2022 was the most recent for anybody in this epic group?
This is a very narrow way to point out that there’s a very broad reason the Warriors can survive weird fugue states like the weeks waiting for Kerr or the seasons, like this one, when they’ve missed the playoffs.
It’s Curry, who doesn’t send out passive-aggressive messages, doesn’t try to dictate personnel moves, isn’t muttering about his coach, and — even if it might seem contrary to his immediate goals — isn’t pushing for the Warriors to sell off future assets to make the present more palatable.
Has Curry signed off on Kerr and Mike Dunleavy’s public statements recalibrating the “championship, championship, championship” mentality of the last 12 years? Folks, I strongly suspect that Curry is one of the guiding lights of this shift.
A lot of emotions were stirred up in the back-to-back-to-back Steve Kerr/Draymond Green/Curry pressers after the season-ending loss in Phoenix last month. But now that the Kerr situation has been resolved, Curry’s thoughtful tone probably was the most significant for the franchise’s long-term state of play.
“I think we can reshape the narrative, knowing in the back of our mind that [winning a title] is the ultimate goal,” Curry said then. “But we have to get back to the basics of what makes a good basketball team, a competitive basketball team every single night. Realize how hard it is to win in this league. But can we rethink how we do things with the foundation that we’ve established?
“We don’t have to keep saying ‘championship, championship, championship’ every day even though we’ve experienced that. Can we just build the foundation again with what this team needs to do, with the way that the game is played now, how fast it is, how young and athletic it is? All of those things we kind of have to put on the drawing board just to get back to being competitive every single night.”
This doesn’t mean that Curry is willing to accept a big downturn, of course. He’s still immensely valuable, especially if he can figure out a way to manage his recurring knee issue. Jimmy Butler should have time left as an impact player once he recovers from his torn ACL. Draymond can still take over games defensively. Kerr is a proven winner.
But Kerr called this an “inflection point” for a reason — he knows things have to change. He knows Joe Lacob, Mike Dunleavy, and Kirk Lacob want some changes. Kerr wants some changes.
Most importantly, Curry wants and needs some changes; but Curry wants all of this to happen with Kerr fully on board and with Kerr’s larger philosophies about sharing the ball and team chemistry still a huge part of this. Which is what the next few months will be all about for the Warriors.
They don’t necessarily need to try to load their roster for a seven-game series against the Thunder or Spurs. That’s not realistic. But the Warriors can try to build themselves back up — with sharper play and younger, healthier bodies — to at least get themselves to the tier just below the top teams in the Western Conference. Then who knows from there.
It’s more of a reset than a teardown, because that’s what’s best for Curry; and what’s best for Curry is always what’s best for the Warriors.
As Dunleavy said last week, the ball is in Draymond’s court; he has a 2026-27 player option for $27.7 million and if he exercises it, that’s pretty much that.
Except: The Warriors have a strong interest in lowering that number, which would help get them below the luxury-tax line and open up other cap tools to build the roster. And Draymond has already expressed interest in declining the option and signing a longer-term deal with the Warriors.
Practically, if Draymond hits free agency, he’s unlikely to draw huge interest from teams with cap room. More likely, a contender would offer him the full non-taxpayer midlevel exception of about $15.1 million.
The simple compromise would be Draymond opting out of the PO then signing a two-year contract (timed up with Kerr’s new deal) with the Warriors worth about $18-20 million a year. That’d get more total guaranteed money for Draymond and a lower cap number for the Warriors.
Another note: The Warriors don’t exactly have a replacement for Draymond, especially while Butler and Moses Moody are out. If it’s not Draymond, who’s taking on the matchups against all the best forwards or centers? It’ll likely be Draymond again next season, and it should be.
Here are, IMO, the top three factors for the Warriors as they dive deep into their draft preparation:
1. They really need a young two-way wing player. When they won titles, the Warriors just about cornered the market then won titles with these guys — Durant, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Andrew Wiggins — around Curry.
Their best option for this role going into next season, while Butler and Moody rehab, is Gui Santos, who, as Kerr suggested last week, is best lined up as a super-role player.
2. They don’t need a point guard.
3. With a bunch of very talented point guards likely to go in the five-to-10 range, there should be a good young wing player available at 11.
This just doesn’t seem like a draft when the Warriors will be compelled to move up, down, or out of the first round. Just staying where they are could give them a choice of Tennessee’s Nate Ament, Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg, or Karim López, who played in the Australian league the past two seasons … or if the Warriors get lucky, Arizona’s Brayden Burries could fall to 11.
The Warriors didn’t load up their roster with recently wounded players on purpose. It just worked out that way — and, as Kerr emphasized on Friday — the five or six guys who couldn’t play back-to-backs or needed week-long breaks here or there just locked up most of the Warriors’ day-to-day lineup decisions.
Also, Butler and Moody will count on the roster but won’t be playing for a while next season. So the other 13 spots shouldn’t and can’t be filled with players likely to miss a lot of time.
In this environment, I don’t see how the Warriors can bring back both Kristaps Porzingis (unrestricted free agent) and Al Horford (player option for next season), even if both are interested in returning. I think they’re not likely to bid too high if De’Anthony Melton declines his player option. And I don’t see much chance of using up a roster spot for Seth Curry again.
Then again, one of the most attractive free agents in the market will turn 42 in December. But of course, LeBron James played 1,989 minutes this regular season. Where would that have ranked on this season’s Warriors? Second, behind only Brandin Podziemski’s 2,333.
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