This season: Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis.
Last season: Anthony Lamb, Ty Jerome and JaMychal Green.
I’m trying not to be extra mean to those past players, but if you type out those two lines, you really don’t have to reach for the quantum formulas and dense statistical tables. The Golden State Warriors are better this season than they were last season, though they will end up with a worse seeding and will not be favored to go as deep into the playoffs as they advanced last spring.
The Warriors aren’t really title contenders, but they didn’t get any worse. In fact, they got better — just practically, measured against the most recent full result, which was last season’s team.
With three games left to play, the Warriors already have the same number of victories (44) as last season and have a shot to climb up from their current 10th slot in the West to nine (over the Los Angeles Lakers, if the Warriors go 3-0 to the finish line or the Lakers lose elsewhere) or even to eight (if the Lakers lose and also either the Sacramento Kings, New Orleans Pelicans or Phoenix Suns stumble badly this week).
Last season, they were the sixth seed (in a weaker conference) and upset No. 3 Sacramento before losing to the No. 7 seed Lakers in the second round. This season, the Warriors are likeliest to be in the 9-10 Play-In Tournament game, which would mean they’d need to win twice to get into the first round and then would have to turn around and play the West’s top seed. It would be an exhausting experience. But this season’s Warriors actually are better built for the deeper rounds than they were a year ago — if they can get there.
This season: Chris Paul at the end of games.
Last season: Jordan Poole at the end of his Warriors’ tenure.
How will it turn out? How will success and failure be determined at the end of this season? Let’s wait on all those grand proclamations. The Warriors have won eight of their last nine games to get to this point. They’ve got momentum. They could also get knocked back down pretty swiftly. Let’s see what happens. This franchise has ultra-high standards and should be held to them, no question. It all might be mostly torn down at some near point. The dynasty might already be over. It also might hang on for a while longer, at least as a discussion point.
But I think that even before the 82nd game takes place on Sunday and the Play-In process unfolds, we can judge that the Warriors have moved forward, not backward. Their frontline stars are one year older, but overall, the team is younger, faster, deeper, more connected and smarter. This is what the Eye Test tells us, and what Steve Kerr is telling us, too.
“We’re definitely a better team,” Kerr said earlier this week. “Better two-way basketball, better connection, chemistry. A much better vibe with this team.”
This season: 24-16 road record, with a game in Portland on Thursday to finish up the away schedule.
Last season: 11-30 road record.
It hasn’t always looked pretty in 2023-24, and some of the most indelible indicators of a major long-term decline, from Draymond Green’s outbursts to the lack of a true No. 2 scorer behind Stephen Curry (and the added burden that puts on his shoulders), have only gotten clearer this season.
But this Warriors team is just more put together than they’ve been since they won the title two seasons ago. This team is more balanced. And maybe there are some echoes of the way the Warriors ended 2020-21, when they rallied from mediocrity to a 15-5 finish, then lost two Play-In games — and carried that momentum into 2021-22.
This season: No James Wiseman at all.
Last season: Well, you get the point.
OK, there I go being mean to a very nice person who just never fit on the Warriors, despite Wiseman’s massive talents. But when you run through the names of players who got some — or a lot of — minutes last season (including Wiseman’s 262 last season before he was traded for a package that was turned into Gary Payton II) and you see who replaced them this season, you get the full picture of the upgrades and the better vibes.
Starting with …
Draymond’s two suspensions destabilized this season, but even that was not comparable to his punching of Poole in training camp last season.
The Warriors could’ve been a 50-win team this season if they didn’t have that 10-11 slog through the games Draymond missed due to his two suspensions in the first half of the season. But at this point, even if it sounds crass, that’s just the cost of being in the Draymond business these days, and as I always say, he’s still worth it.
The Poole incident last season, however, was nothing the Warriors (or Poole) could just shake off. A title-defense season? No, the punch turned everything into a seven-month crisis that couldn’t be fully dealt with until the end of the season. Then when Poole was traded for Paul last summer, which discarded Poole’s huge contract and gave the Warriors the flexibility of CP3’s non-guaranteed contract for next season, it also simply added a better player.
The Warriors went 10-11 in Draymond Green’s suspension absences but kept the incidents from destabilizing their season. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Podziemski and Jackson-Davis are leaps and bounds better than last season’s rookies, Patrick Baldwin Jr. and Ryan Rollins, and clearly better than journeymen Lamb, Jerome and JaMychal Green, too.
It’s still amazing to note that Lamb played 1,195 minutes last season and Jerome played 816. That’s because Kerr couldn’t play Baldwin, Rollins (who were both traded away last offseason) or Wiseman and didn’t want to play Kuminga or Moses Moody too much. But it was just spinning wheels — if you’ve got to play guys like Lamb and Jerome, you’re destined to come up short of quality players in the playoffs. Which is what happened against the Lakers.
There’s been a lot written and said about the 21-year-old Podziemski (leading the Warriors in plus-minus at plus-264) and 24-year-old Jackson-Davis (who has taken over as the starting center) and not a big need to say a lot more here; but let’s just emphasize that Mike Dunleavy Jr.’s home run first draft as general manager was desperately needed for the roster to make sense this season.
There’s also been a ton written and said about the 21-year-old Kuminga’s elevated play, much of it by me, and there will be more to be said and written as he adapts, once again, to a backup role while Kerr goes with a Draymond-Andrew Wiggins-TJD starting group up front.
But the practical effect of this youth movement is that Kerr has a younger, bouncier center (TJD over Kevon Looney) and has Podziemski and Kuminga ready to change the game off the bench. And if any of them falter, there’s another 21-year-old, Moses Moody, who always seems to dig out a key offensive rebound or tip a pass or two in his occasionally rare minutes.
There’s a playoff-ready nine-man rotation — Curry, Draymond, Klay Thompson, Wiggins, Podziemski, TJD, Kuminga, CP3 and GP2 — which can go to 10 when Kerr plays Moody.
And all of these under-25 players should only get better, not worse, over the next few weeks and years.
The Warriors — and the rest of the NBA — are still waiting for Stephen Curry’s patented second-half hot streak to kick in. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Curry hasn’t had his second-half hot streak yet.
Maybe it won’t happen this season. It’s already very late. But I’m not betting against at least a mini-Curry eruption into the Play-In games and possibly beyond to echo his epic final-stretch moments in the 2022 postseason and through the years before that.
So far, Curry’s only averaging 22.7 points on 42.1 shooting overall (37.5 percent from 3-point distance) in 22 games after the All-Star break this season. In 50 games before the break, Curry averaged 28.0 points and shot 46.2 percent overall (42.1 percent from 3).
Is he tired after playing his most regular-season minutes (2,353 so far) since 2016-17, when he was 28? Maybe a little bit. It might come later and last shorter than the Curry supernovas of his 20s and early 30s. But it’s probably still coming, and you know the Warriors’ upcoming opponents are bracing for it.
Klay and Wiggins both seem to be in rhythm.
They’ve in very different contractual moments right now — Wiggins signed a long-term deal two offseasons ago, Klay is due to become a free agent this summer. But the contrasting situations seem to fit them now, after both had carryover struggles early this season after some clunky playoff performances last offseason.
Wiggins probably needed the contract security as he worked through some things this season, and he’s been a more consistent scorer lately. His defensive intensity has picked up noticeably, too. Klay, after admitting he was thinking a bit too much about his future early on, seems to have found some basketball serenity — in five April games so far, Klay is averaging 23.6 points on 52.9 percent shooting (44 percent from 3). The less he stresses about his value, the more valuable he becomes as a player.
GO DEEPER
Warriors might be finding their optimal form, just when they need it most
(Top photo of Brandin Podziemski and Stephen Curry during a March game against the Chicago Bulls: Kavin Mistry / Getty Images)
