In the NBA, you win playoff rounds and championships with superstars, All-Stars, and high-leverage role players who are having the postseasons of their lives. I think the Warriors still have trace elements of all those things that pushed them to the 2022 title — and I know they still think that about themselves.
But to set that all up, you’ve got to get through the regular-season marathon first. You’ve got to survive the January-February stretches when your best guys are tired or hurt or both, and when some of your second-line guys are faltering. You’ve got to fight through flat games and pile up enough victories to earn a top-tier playoff seeding. You’ve got to win some games with the full depth of your roster.
You definitely have to win a bunch of games like that when your two Hall of Famers — Stephen Curry and Draymond Green — are at the stage of their careers when they shouldn’t be carrying every bit of the load through the dog days.
The main thing I’ve concluded through the Warriors’ 4-0 preseason so far is that, yes, they’re built to steal some wins even when the top guys are out or not at their best. This isn’t quite a repeat of the famous “Strength in Numbers” roster that lifted them to the 2015 championship, then the 73-win season that followed. That Warriors team was filled with legends doing legendary things, of course. This roster is older at the top, younger in the middle, and decidedly less soaring. But it’s still very interesting. And also quite deep.
The Warriors managed to win 46 games last season despite going 10-11 during Draymond’s two suspensions and 3-5 in the games Curry missed. That was only good enough for the 10th seed and a play-in wipeout against the Kings — and the Western Conference is only getting better. It might take 49 or 50 wins to get out of the play-in tournament this season. You could need 52 to 54 wins to get home-court advantage in the first round.
How do the Warriors grab four or five more wins this season while keeping Curry and Draymond as fresh as possible for whatever they can conjure in April and May? We saw a version of this for Sunday’s game against the Detroit Pistons, when Curry, Draymond, and Andrew Wiggins were all out, but the Warriors put out a representative starting lineup and still had the depth to use Buddy Hield, Kevon Looney, Gary Payton II, and Kyle Anderson as their first substitutes. And then that second-unit group immediately went on a 17-2 run.
The Warriors are legitimately 12 deep. If Lindy Waters III continues to shoot like this (he’s 11 of 19 from the 3-point arc so far in the preseason), the Warriors could be 13 deep. That’s too many guys to play in a sensible rotation. But it gives Steve Kerr the ability to stave off a bad losing streak if and when Draymond, Curry, Wiggins, or any other important player misses a chunk of time this season.
“With our older guys and the guys getting heavy minutes, just not having a letdown when 10, 11, and 12 [are] coming in, be able to fill in the minutes and just being able to rely on each other,” Kyle Anderson said Sunday night. “That should help us throughout the long season.”
The newfound depth has been my biggest takeaway from preseason so far. Here are six more observations.
1. They have insurance for Andrew Wiggins
The Warriors don’t have to fret too much about Wiggins being full-go to start the regular season while he’s still dealing with the illness that has kept him out of the preseason so far.
Several things knocked the Warriors off-kilter in 2022-23, but Wiggins only playing 37 games in the regular season probably was the biggest. He followed that up by playing in 71 last season but hasn’t come close to matching the athletic and production levels he put up during the ’22 postseason run, when he probably was the Warriors’ second-best player. And the Warriors just didn’t have anybody else who could step into any version of that two-way role. (Klay Thompson and Chris Paul did a lot of important things last season, but they absolutely were not major athletic presences.)
This season, De’Anthony Melton and GP2 are options to defend the opponents’ top perimeter players if Wiggins is out. Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski, and Moses Moody can help. So can Anderson.
If Wiggins can’t start right away, I expect Melton to get the nod alongside Curry. And if it goes well, he might stay there for a while. Meanwhile, Podziemski probably gets into the starting lineup when Wiggins is fully back. And the guy who goes to the bench becomes the unofficial second-unit offensive initiator. However it works out, it’s all about the extra options this season.
2. Losing Klay won’t mean fewer 3s
The Warriors have a more varied array of shooters — and logically can aim to make at least 50 more 3-pointers than they did last season, when they made the second most in the league.
Last season, Curry made 357 3-pointers and Klay made 268. But their next-highest total was Wiggins’ 91. They’ll obviously miss Klay’s contributions here, but Hield has made more than 200 3s five times in his career, so he’ll be given full approval to heave as often as possible in the non-Curry minutes this season.
One odd quirk to Klay’s Hall of Fame Warriors career is that he was rarely great when Kerr used him as the No. 1 option on the second unit while Curry rested. Klay flourished when he was paired with Curry, not when he was without him. Hield might be better suited to just firing away in those 12-14 minutes a game that Curry rests.
What’s more, Melton, Kuminga, and Podziemski all could make 120 or more 3s this season, too. As they have throughout the preseason, the three’s will by flying.
3. Melton is going to play a lot
If he stays healthy, Melton might play more minutes this season than anybody not named Curry or Draymond.
I asked Kerr on Sunday: Where does Melton fit best in the rotation — as a starter, a backup, or as a blend of both?
“Anywhere,” Kerr said. “That’s the beauty of De’Anthony. He’s a basketball player. He can cut, he can handle it, he can play off the ball. He gets it. He sees the pictures out there. Feels like every lineup is better when he’s out there. And on the defensive end, he’s really good. He’s good on the ball, he’s also strong enough to guard up a position.”
Melton fits as a secondary scoring option alongside Curry and either Wiggins or Kuminga. He fits as a playmaker when Curry is off the floor. He fits alongside Podziemski in a second-unit backcourt. He fits when the Warriors want to go defense-first. He fits everything Kerr wants this version of the Warriors to look like.
4. Anderson is going to get minutes, too
Kerr is looking at an interesting second-unit core group: Anderson, Hield, Looney, and GP2. The point guard will be either Podziemski or Melton.
“They’re both elite defenders,” Kerr said of the Anderson-Payton combo. “Both really smart. Kyle was a plus-21 in 13 minutes, didn’t even make a shot. But that’s what he does, he makes an impact on the game without it showing up on the stat sheet.”
Anderson said the coaching staff has mentioned that he could be playing some center, too.
5. Kuminga is crucial
Is Kuminga most valuable as a power forward? Maybe, but the Warriors aren’t moving Draymond aside anytime soon. Can Kuminga play small forward? Maybe, especially if he keeps shooting the 3 as smoothly and lethally as he has in the preseason (55.6 percent), but that’s still TBD as a regular-season thing — and it will depend on who else is around him.
Or is Kuminga’s real value as a future trade piece when the Warriors go big-game shopping again in February? He’s still only 22. He still could be all of these things, or none of these things, which is the fun of watching him start his fourth NBA season — but also the very complicated thing about negotiating his rookie-deal extension.
There’s no reason for Kuminga to want much less than the $224 million deals he’s seen his 2021 draft classmates Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, Scottie Barnes and Franz Wagner sign recently. If Kuminga has a big season, he’ll be worth it. And if he accepts a relative discount deal, that’d only make him more likely to be traded in February or next offseason — and he’d have no power to pick where.
There’s no reason for the Warriors to have to pay him now, either, because all those other guys have already broken through as featured players, while Kuminga hasn’t. Also, there aren’t a lot of teams who’ve saved enough cap space next offseason to make a high-end run at Kuminga, and he’d be a restricted free agent, anyway.
There are too many open questions. I just don’t see a deal happening by the deadline.
6. Moody’s role is still not clear
If the Warriors were ready to give Moody a rotation spot, they wouldn’t have acquired Melton, Anderson, and Hield last summer. But all three of them are likely ahead of Moody on the depth chart and he already was behind Wiggins, Kuminga, and Podziemski.
So, after a frustrating few seasons as a fan and locker-room favorite who just couldn’t get into Kerr’s main rotation, Moody might be even further back in the pecking order now. He’s also eligible for a rookie extension, but it’s hard to see a future for Moody with the Warriors beyond this season — or maybe even the next few months.