They will not talk about submitting to destiny and they will not actually submit. At least not right now. The Warriors will keep fighting, as Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry forcefully noted Wednesday night after their bruising victory in Minneapolis.
They have pride. They have those four trophies. They have Curry and Draymond Green. They will fight. They have to fight. Hey, the Warriors might even get on a roll and once again start to look fairly dangerous in the Western Conference landscape. It’s possible.
“Anybody who thinks I am OK with being on an average basketball team is insane,” Curry told reporters on Wednesday.
But it’s almost the halfway point of the season and the Warriors are 20-20, in 10th place in the West, just a half-game ahead of the 12th spot. Even with Wednesday’s win, they’re just 8-17 since Nov. 23 (wild stat: they’re 3-1 against Minnesota in this swooning span). They’ve been hit with some injuries, but even with a full lineup, they look like they’re a couple of top-line players short of true contention.
Would it be so bad for the Warriors if all the fighting and wrestling still keeps them about where they are now, deep in the Western Conference muddle, and ends with them falling short of the playoffs? Would it be terrible to try hard but inevitably lose in either the play-in tournament (like last season) or get eliminated from all postseason play — and land a good lottery spot and maybe line up all their best assets for the best player on the trade market next July? No, it probably wouldn’t be horrendous. It actually might be the Warriors’ most practical path back into relevance.
Next season is probably their last best shot
Curry & Co. surely aren’t thrilled about the current experience, but it wouldn’t be an awful thing for this franchise to accept that they’re an average team going through average-team things. She should not be deluded enough to believe there’s an instant fix on the horizon and not impatient enough to ignore that their best shot is next season, not this one.
Here’s the heart of what Curry, Draymond, and Steve Kerr have been saying the last few days: They’ve got too much at stake in the next few years to panic about their place in the NBA universe right now.
They’re not going to win the championship this season. They need at least one big trade and one more influx of secondary talent to get back into that top tier of NBA teams. They’ll have a chance at that next off-season. And they know they need to be a lot better than average, if possible, one more time in Curry’s extended prime.
“I hope there’s not a misconception that we’re not fighting and scrapping and hoping that we can do everything possible to keep this thing going — ’cause that’s what we’re doing,” Kerr said after the game. “It almost feels like the narrative became, ‘Oh, the Warriors are giving in.’ We’re not giving in. We’re just not going to give away the future. That’s two totally different things.”
They’re not dealing away their most interesting stuff — Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski, Trayce Jackson-Davis, and any future unprotected first-round picks — for a modest gain. They’ll explore trades at the margins that won’t cost them anything and that might be useful in a larger trade this summer. They’ll play this out, pretty much as they are. They’ve arrived at mediocrity naturally and they can stay there naturally through April. Then Mike Dunleavy Jr. and the front office, with, as always, input from Curry, Draymond, and Kerr, will have one more go at it this off-season.
All of the stakeholders have talked about it. They’ve agreed. They’re realistic. And this is what we’ve been seeing and hearing. Strategy, not submission. It’s the natural order of things for a dying but thoughtful dynasty grasping at one last straw. It also makes sense.
Can they strike lottery gold?
As it stands now, the Warriors are sitting in the 13th slot in next June’s draft but with a real shot to end up in the top 10. The team in the No. 9 slot before the lottery has a 4.5% chance to win the No. 1 pick (and potential superstar Cooper Flagg), a 4.8% shot at No. 2, a 5.2% chance at No. 3 and 5.7% at No. 4. That’s 20.2% to get one of those four picks — in a draft that seems to offer a chance at a star at least through the fifth or sixth selection.
If the Warriors end up in the eighth slot going into the lottery, they’d have a better than 25% chance at one of the top-four picks and a 6% at No. 1. And the higher the pick ends up, the more value it’ll have on the trade market.
Of course, the Warriors had three recent lottery picks that have not changed much of anything. They blew one of them (James Wiseman, No. 2 in 2020), they’re still weighing what to do with Kuminga (No. 7 in 2021), and even an optimistic projection for Moses Moody (No. 14 in 2021) would be far below stardom.
But hitting on a high pick or using one in a trade to land a veteran star are the fastest ways to upgrade a franchise. Dunleavy hasn’t had a top-15 pick in his two drafts, but he’s shown some skill in his maneuvering the board and ending up with Podziemski (19th pick) and Jackson-Davis (57th) last season. The Warriors didn’t have a first-round pick last season, offloading it years ago in the Kevin Durant exodus and payroll-cleaning (their lottery slot ended up as the 14th pick, used by Washington to select Carlton Carrington).
Here are some previous players who were drafted in the 7-14 range and have turned into important pieces on good teams: Cason Wallace (No. 10 in 2023), Dereck Lively (No. 12 in 2023), Dyson Daniels (No. 8 in 2022), Jalen Williams (No. 12 in 2022), and Franz Wagner (No. 8 in 2021). Further down the line: Alperen Sengun (No. 16 in 2021) and Trey Murphy (No. 17 in 2021).
They tried this season. It hasn’t worked
Last summer, Dunleavy used the salary slots of Klay Thompson and Chris Paul to drop out of the first apron and add De’Anthony Melton, Kyle Anderson, and Buddy Hield. After they couldn’t land Paul George or Lauri Markkanen, it was a solid plan. But Melton got hurt, and Hield and Anderson have been so-so. Then Dunleavy flipped Melton for Dennis Schroder, who has looked out of place and hesitant since he arrived. And Kuminga got hurt, which complicated his situation going into restricted free agency next summer.
It’s a little messy. That happens sometimes when you try stuff. Unless the Warriors can make a trade that doesn’t sacrifice part of their future, there’s little need to triple-down on all this at the trade deadline. The Warriors tried. They can try again next summer.
As Curry told reporters after the loss in Toronto on Monday, he does not support “desperate trades or desperate moves that deplete the future. … Doesn’t mean that you’re not trying to get better, doesn’t mean that you’re not active in any type of search.”
So Curry and Draymond don’t want a panic move. Giving up Andrew Wiggins and Kuminga (and more) for Jimmy Butler at this stage in Butler’s controversial career would be panicky and desperate. There’s no big deal out there currently that makes sense. If one comes up, Warriors management will try to do it. And they’ll consult with Curry and Draymond when they do. But it’s far, far more likely something much better will come available next July. And Curry, Draymond, Kerr, and the rest are secure enough to wait for that moment.
It’s not cynical or meek. It’s strategy. The big smart move and the big jump might not happen this summer or next season or the next one, either. But there’s a chance at it. The Warriors owe it to themselves to make sure they don’t blow that chance now.