If all else fails for the Warriors, Gui Santos can save them.
Well, at least that’s what happened in Detroit on Thursday, when all might’ve been lost if not for Santos substituting into the game for his first meaningful minutes this season and jolting the Warriors back to life. Santos grabbed loose balls, tipped away passes, made four 3-pointers, and just played harder and faster than everybody else on court.
It was an astounding performance, especially against the backdrop of so much Warriors’ docility during their long recent slump. It tipped the game to the Warriors, who won 107-104 despite a struggling night from Stephen Curry, and it kept the Warriors above .500, at 19-18.
But there’s also a sober reality: the Warriors needed Santos, who has been to the G League twice this season and only had his contract for this season fully guaranteed a few days ago, to win this game. Which is maybe not a great indicator for future victories, starting Friday night in Indianapolis, unless Santos is gearing up for a Hall of Fame tear.
Granted, the Warriors on Thursday were without Jonathan Kuminga (probably out another few weeks with a sprained ankle), Andrew Wiggins (personal issue), Moses Moody (knee), Gary Payton II (calf), and Brandin Podziemski (abdominal muscle). They might be without all five guys again on Friday — plus possibly Curry on the back end of a back-to-back. But injuries are part of every season. And, other than Curry, it’s not like the Warriors were great when they had all or most of the other guys healthy this season.
The larger point is that this victory almost certainly didn’t change the trajectory of this season, or even of the last few weeks. Even with the Santos one-off, this game was just an expansion of this run-of-the-mill experience so far. The Warriors aren’t terrible. They won’t bottom out. But they’re not very good, either. They match up terribly with younger, more versatile teams. They can beat most of the confused teams. Their best players need more and more rest as they get older. And with Kuminga sidelined for at least a few more weeks, there really isn’t a way for the Warriors to get a ton better this season, unless some magical trade appears by the Feb. 6 trade deadline.
The Warriors are right where they belong, in the middling muddle of the Western Conference, currently in ninth place, only 1.5 games behind sixth-place Lakers, but also just 2 games in front of 12th-place Phoenix. And the most interesting part of this season — watching Kuminga’s value go up and down every night via NBA dynamic pricing — is on ice for now and probably through the deadline.
So what’s at stake in the next few weeks, as the Warriors assess their situation and try not to fritter away another one of the final seasons of Curry’s prime? Let’s take a look…
No panic moves. No house cleaning. No stupidity
The worst thing the Warriors could do right now is make a short-sighted panic move that surrenders assets that should be saved up for something much bigger down the road or wipes away everything that was important about what has been built here.
You might not think that Joe Lacob and Mike Dunleavy Jr. — last seen huddled in a hallway together after the Warriors’ blowout home loss to Miami earlier this week — are set to exercise much patience right about now. Anxiety is understandable from the front office and the fans. Believe me, they hear the fans. But they have to be realistic. Again, the Warriors are not far out of a decent spot in the West.
And they’ve still got Curry. If he wants to stay, you do not trade Stephen Curry. You do not think about it. You build the best team you can around him and you try to get better and better. Any other decision is insanity. This season, it’s feasible that Kuminga could come back from his injury better than ever and ready to score in bundles deep into the spring. That, plus Curry and Draymond Green, is the hope they’ve got.
They won’t win the championship, but the Warriors can be better than they were last season. And a February trade that sends away a future first-round pick for a moderate return (say, Nikola Vucevic), might look incredibly stupid if the Warriors have a chance at trading for a superstar next summer and … can’t do it because they don’t have that first-round pick anymore.
The Warriors probably have one more swing left at landing another superstar during Curry’s prime. Maybe it won’t happen. They tried for Paul George last off-season and fell short. But they have to be ready if the opportunity comes. (It’s not Jimmy Butler.) That’s what Curry wants. And that’s the way the Warriors will play it — if they can resist the impulse to cash in some chips this February.
The Kuminga situation is frozen
A lot of things pretty much got locked into place when Kuminga badly sprained his right ankle last weekend.
I don’t think the Warriors can/will/should trade him by February because he might not be fully healthy by then, and even if he is, how can anybody properly put a trade value on him? Kuminga, at the deadline, will be exactly what he’s been all season and what he is now: a Rorschach test for what you like in a player and how you project talent into the future.
Maybe Kuminga would’ve been traded if he remained healthy. I think there are teams that were interested before he got hurt and probably still are interested. But he’ll be a restricted free agent in July — who wants to pay him $40 million a year? How about $36 million? Does anybody know what he’ll be in a year or two? Would a team give up what the Warriors want for him and still be ready to pay him $144 million or so over four years? No, I think that equation for now is canceled by the injury.
I think this is now headed toward the Warriors and Kuminga negotiating for a new deal in July. I don’t think the Warriors will offer $40 million a year, but with a few payroll trims elsewhere, they can probably stomach something closer to $34 million a year. He’s too important an asset to do it any other way, unless he’s the key piece of a big trade. Which is another reason not to trade him now.
Another middling trade is possible
The trade for Dennis Schroder a few weeks ago? Not a banger so far — the Warriors are 4-7 since his arrival and he’s looked surprisingly tentative for most of the time. But it wasn’t a costly deal (all they did was send away the injured De’Anthony Melton) and Schroder is an incremental upgrade in one key area, taking some ball-handling responsibility off of Curry’s hands.
Schroder could also have value as salary ballast for another mid-level trade at the deadline. But Curry is banged up already, looks tired, and has been exasperated by his teammates’ inability to score when he’s getting double- and triple-teamed. Folks, this is probably not the time for the Warriors to subtract a veteran point guard who can attack defenses when Curry is either resting or stuck in the middle of layers of defense.
But the Warriors have some other contracts that they can move. And if they can get Vucevic without surrendering a first-round pick or if there’s another 3-point-shooting center available, the Warriors have every incentive to do it. Just to get a little bit better. To move up as far as they can in the standings. And do it without being stupid or impetuous at a time when many fans (and other teams) really seem to want them to be all of that.