NBA PREVIEW : SAVE THE LAST DANCE, WARRIORS!!!

The Golden State Warriors have some big questions to answer about their future but there could be a chance that the team elects to push all that down the road for one more season. There’s a growing feeling that the 2023-24 NBA season could be viewed as the team’s “last dance” with their current core.

Last season was a slightly strange one for the Golden State Warriors. They headed into the season as reigning champions, with pretty much the same squad that lifted the Larry O’Brien trophy in 2022. Throughout the season, Golden State stayed relatively healthy, although they lost Andrew Wiggins for large parts of the season.

The Golden State Warriors had a good 2022-23 NBA season, but considering this core is perpetually graded on the championship-or-bust scale, good wasn’t good enough.

A year ago, Golden State had a dream: remain a contender with its old core while developing a young core to be a contender in the future. A year later, that dream seems to have been confirmed as a chimera.

So, the Warriors spent their summer attempting to plot their path back to greatness.

They made some significant changes (which we’ll discuss more in a minute), but did the Dubs do enough for this nucleus to collect a fifth championship ring? Or are Golden State’s days of victory parades a thing of the past?

While the Warriors kept their core intact by giving Draymond Green a new four-year, $100 million deal, they made some substantial changes to the supporting cast around it.

Also chief among them was a swap with the Washington Wizards that sent out Jordan Poole (with picks and prospects) for longtime Dubs nemesis, Chris Paul. While his methodical style is a departure from the team’s trademark free-wheeling play, he fills a longstanding void behind Stephen Curry and should alleviate some of their turnover troubles. Without a doubt, it’s also one of the moves that raises the most questions. The Warriors are now more veteran. Are they also more contenders?

Of course, that’s the idea. Stephen Curry will turn 36 during the next regular season and in San Francisco they have decided that it does not make much sense to develop rookies if it reduces the options of one of the best players in history to fight for more rings in his final seasons to the maximum. level. If the window closes, you have to squeeze it as much as possible and not take half measures. Then the time will come to look for a new franchise player with whom to open another.

Outside of that, Golden State used free agency to beef up its bench with steady veterans Dario Saric and Cory Joseph. The team also lost their sixth-leading scorer in the offseason with Donte DiVincenzo heading to New York. But Cory Joseph is a solid replacement for DiVincenzo. Dario Saric is the team’s other addition, who when healthy is a good rotation option in the team’s forwards. Šarić looks like an effortless fit for the offensive system, since he can dribble, pass and shoot, though it’s worth noting he’s never been mistaken for a defensive anchor. Joseph is an energetic defender and reliable decision-maker, though his minutes could be limited so long as Paul and Curry are healthy.

Earlier in the offseason, the Warriors also picked up two players on draft night in No. 19 pick Brandin Podziemski and No. 57 pick Trayce Jackson-Davis. Both likely face an uphill climb for a rotation spot, but if either cracks it, Jackson-Davis might be the one to do it. His athleticism is something Golden State lacks at the center spot, and his passing ability could allow him to thrive on short rolls.

The thing is that, although they start off as a team that no one dares to rule out, it doesn’t seem like anyone is choosing them as big favorites either. 22-23 was a season in which they never seemed to be at the level of the best in the West, a feeling that has not disappeared during the summer, but the truth is that it was a year that became rarer little by little and with several factors that They didn’t help them look like the champions they were. Factors that, on this occasion, might not be there.

And it is worth not forgetting that the season began with Draymond Green attacking Jordan Poole, for many months it carried a certain air of desperation with certain hasty decisions by Poole himself, we find Warriors with a surprising inability to win away from home, They lost Curry for two long stretches in December and February, Wiggins for more than half of the regular season, Kerr couldn’t find the key with the young players… In short, what is said to be a normal year was not.

Now Poole is gone, Draymond hasn’t assaulted anyone, and there are fewer young people to accommodate. Injuries will arise, as always, but extraordinary cases such as Wiggins’ absence for personal reasons during the second half of the season seem difficult to repeat. Does this mean they will be more like 2022 than 2023? Not necessarily. Because some gaps have been covered, but perhaps not all.

NBA PREVIEW : DETROIT PISTONS, ALL MOTION, NO MOVEMENT. ALL HOPES STILL HINGE ON CUNNINGHAM.

STAR WATCH 

DRAYMOND GREEN 

Green headed into the offseason as a free agent and there seemed to be some interest from other teams after he had opted out of his $27.6 million contract for 2023-24. But it was a long-term deal with the Warriors which followed, worth around $100 million across four years for Green.

It is a massive deal that sees Green earn more per year than guys like Nikola Vucevic, Brook Lopez, Rui Hachimura and Max Strus. Considering Green is going to be 38 years old when the contract expires, it is certainly a risk for the Warriors.

Draymond has a player option for next season and could test free agency if that’s something he wants to do this summer.

While in the past he has voiced the possibility of him moving on from the Warriors, he recently made it clear that in an ideal world, he would retire as a Warrior. But the Warriors’ salary cap issues do make that complicated.

The easy move to avoid all that and push back that huge decisions would be for him to opt into the final year of his contract. That would essentially put Draymond on the same timeline as Klay Thompson, two parts of this team’s core.

Both would be expiring contracts after next season and could set up the team for some big changes then, if that’s something they want to explore. That would appease Curry’s call for “one last dance” for this Warriors’ core and would give Golden State the option next summer to either keep the band together or to effectively move on altogether.

There’s no question that it’s a huge decision that could have huge implications for the franchise. But as soon as Bob Myers stepped down from his position as the team’s president and general manager, it was clear that it was the end of an era.

But Curry, Klay, and Draymond may all want one more crack at it. They want a shot to get back to the mountaintop. After a disappointing title defense season in which they lost in the second round of the playoffs to the Los Angeles Lakers, how could you blame them?

 

BIGGEST QUESTION 

It’s tempting to put Paul’s role under the microscope here or attempt to guess whether Klay Thompson can regain more of the defensive form he flashed before having back-to-back seasons erased by injuries. However, we’ll instead put the spotlight on Jonathan Kuminga, who might be the biggest wild card on the roster.

He is, in a lot of ways, the last prospect standing from Golden State’s previous attempt to tightrope two timelines. While Moses Moody is still around, he always felt like a lesser part of that strategy, since the gap between his floor and ceiling was substantially smaller than those of Kuminga and former Warrior James Wiseman.

Kuminga, the No. 7 pick in 2021, has been handled with kid gloves to this point (career 18.8 minutes per game), but it’s time for the gloves to come off. It does no good to him or the team for him to stagnate in a part-time niche role. If Golden State no longer sees him as part of its future plans, it should still want to at least see him drive up his trade value before sending him packing.

 

STAR WATCH 

CHRIS PAUL

We all already know the Curry-Thompson-Green trio. But suddenly a fourth vertex has been added to this triangle. How will Chris Paul fit into these Warriors? This is undoubtedly the main element to follow.

Until the first friendly matches and, above all, the start of the regular league begin to clarify our doubts, the questions are endless. The option that seems the most logical is for him to start the games from the bench and be in charge of directing the second unit and joining the starters in tight finishes, but the truth is that in the first preparation match he was in the five initial. Will Kerr dive headfirst into a super small-ball making him share the court with Steph, Klay, Wiggins and Draymond from the beginning? And even if this is not the case, how will the sections in which it does coincide with several of them be managed?

A priori, Paul’s presence can free Curry from the ball and give him more options to be a threat off-ball, taking advantage of its gravity to open even more spaces. Can give Draymond Green a new partner to play the pick & roll. He can provide more composure, more nerve and fewer impulsive decisions than Jordan Poole in tight finishes. The potential benefits are many.

Likewise, it may be a sensitive decline when push comes to shove if the trend of recent years continues. He may overlap a little more with Steph as he is a pure point guard. He may not have the ability to act as a plunger that Poole did have and that was so important in the 2022 ring.

Kerr will therefore have to define very clearly what he expects from him and how he can enhance those virtues. We are undoubtedly talking about a player who can fit the project like a glove, who is not coming from his best years but who surely does not need the level of his prime to add many things to a team in which it will not be the first, second and perhaps even third sword. Seeing him in the Warriors shirt is one of the great attractions of the year, which inevitably makes him the man to watch on the team.

 

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