As Warriors walk a delicate line between present and future, Stephen Curry’s bounty won’t last forever

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr has repeatedly identified the 20-game mark as the first point from which he can make an honest assessment of who his team is and, more importantly, what ‘she could move on. We are at this point. Coming into Tuesday’s game with the Boston Celtics, the Warriors are 11-9, good enough for No.7 in the West and just one game behind fifth.

They are also just two games away in the losing streak on the No.12 Oklahoma City Thunder.

Truth be told, the Warriors are an average team. They can beat anyone. They can lose to anyone. They pulled a few bunnies out of their hat with a 19 and 22 point rally to beat the Lakers and Clippers, respectively, but seven of their 11 wins came against teams under 0.500.

Is it a playoff team? Assuming good health, probably. It’s hard to imagine a team with Stephen Curry not doing at least the extended turn. Beyond that, the Warriors are not far from a contender. Under normal circumstances, with a player like Curry entering the back-end of his bounty with only a year left on his contract after this season, the urgency to upgrade the roster would be in full swing.

But in this case, Golden State has an ace up its sleeve, and that ace is Klay Thompson. If you want to take the most optimistic perspective of the Warriors’ next nine months, they spend the rest of this season developing rookie James Wiseman, smashing the playoffs, drafting a stud with the Timberwolves first-round pick. in 2021, then to become contenders again. when Thompson returns next year.

Call me a pessimist, but I don’t see all of this happening. For starters, the Minnesota pick is protected in the top three, and currently the Wolves are in statistic line for a top three pick. In that case, the pick would become unprotected in 2022. In other words, unless the Warriors trade that pick, there’s a good chance it won’t mean anything to their 2021-2022 roster.

More importantly, the idea that Thompson is just going to come back firing all cylinders feels like a reach. At the start of next season, Thompson will not have played an NBA game for almost 30 months. He’s going to be 31 in a week, which means he’ll be 32 in a few months next season, and as we know he’s coming out of a torn ACL. and a torn Achilles.

If the Warriors don’t make big moves, a 90% Thompson probably isn’t enough. It is not even certain that a 100% Thompson places the Warriors in the ranks of legitimate contenders. Seeing how beautiful Kevin Durant and John Wall are so far, given that they both come out of Achilles’ tears, gives the Warriors hope that Thompson can return to his old self. It is misleading, however, in the fact that Durant sat 18 months after the day he tore up his Achilles, and Wall sat 21 months. Thompson will attempt to return to the neighborhood 12 months after the Achilles tear.

“That extra time to readjust and get back to strength can make a big difference,” Dr. Alan Beyer, orthopedic surgeon and executive medical director of the Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Southern California, told CBS Sports. “You just don’t know how one guy is going to come back versus another. Those are two major injuries, and these things are cumulative. … I will say this: if you depend on a player, Klay Thompson or whatever, Coming back after an ACL tear and Achilles completely ruptured and being the same player he was before those injuries is a bet. It’s a really big bet. “

None of this means that Thompson shouldn’t be supposed to come back as a really good player. Whether it’s 85% of his old self or whatever, he’s going to be good. You wonder about defense, but at the very least, he’ll be a great shooter, and by the time the 2022 playoffs roll in, Thompson will have had nearly the 18 months Durant had after tearing Achilles.

But that assumes that Thompson doesn’t suffer from other injuries, even minor ones, that slow down his progress as he tries to regain previous rhythms. As Dr Beyer said, these things are cumulative. Wiseman seems to have a lot of potential, but will he be ready to contribute at the championship level in his second season? Whatever choice the Warriors take with the choice of Minnesota, should that choice even convey it, be ready to contribute as a rookie?

There are a lot of unknowns when the Warriors would actually need everything to go almost exactly as planned to get back to the fight in the short term. And if next year doesn’t go as planned, Curry will now be 33 years old and enter the final year of his contract.

No one thinks he’ll be leaving, but if he looks up and sees a team that has prioritized the future at the expense of maximizing their rapidly dwindling bounty, can we be so sure? The Warriors could, and probably probably will, sign him to a huge expansion before that, but then you pay a lot of aging Curry on a team that can’t really compete for titles. You have become, in essence, the Trail Blazers with Damian Lillard.

All of this indicates that the Warriors are making strong moves to ensure the argument, at least to the extent of their control, beyond putting all their eggs in the Klay’s return basket. There have been rumors that the Warriors are interested in Lonzo Ball. In theory, Ball would go very well with Curry and Thompson next season as the guy with the type of high IQ, ball-moving DNA that Kerr loves. Ball has always needed shooters and scorers around him to thrive, and his accelerated instincts and defensive versatility scream in Warriors basketball.

Yet this movement, or an equivalent, is not the one that dramatically changes the temperature of Golden State. The Ringer’s Jonathan Tjarks recently suggested the Warriors give it some thought a lot bigger by throwing a Godfather offer to the Wizards for Bradley Beal. It would most certainly cost the Warriors Wiseman and Minnesota Pick, as well as other future picks in all likelihood, but Curry is believed to be a one-time player in a generation, and when you have that kind of a player you don’t. not. Don’t let your list building mind start to jump too far.

Rather, you’re doing what the Heat, Cavaliers, and Lakers did when they got their hands on first LeBron James. You give that kind of superstar the pieces they need to compete, because you know that having that kind of superstar is the rarest luxury in the NBA that cannot, under any circumstances or in any way, be wasted. .

Complicating matters is once again Wiseman and the pick of Minnesota are Golden State’s only major strengths. Once the Warriors deal with them, they’re pretty much all-in for the foreseeable future with all they got in return. You can watch the Warriors trading Wiseman and a potential top-five pick like the Lakers trading Brandon Ingram and a top-five pick, but the difference is that the Lakers’ package got them Anthony Davis.

Beal, if the Wizards were to even make him available, it’s not Davis. But Beal is a player big enough to give Curry a chance to compete at least this season, and next season, with Beal, Thompson, Curry and Draymond Green, you’d be talking about a top contender.

For the record, Beal apparently continues to claim behind closed doors that he is committed to Washington, according to The Athletic. But that’s not what Beal wants (as long as you think Beal would actually fight a trade); this is best for wizards. I am with Tjarks. I think a Warriors offer centered on Wiseman and Minnesota’s 2021 pick would potentially call Washington’s bluff “we’re not trading Beal”, and if it did, and Washington gave in, I’d jump on the deal if I was the Warriors.

I understand the counter-argument of using Wiseman and picking Minnesota to usher in the next era of Warriors basketball, as the Spurs were able to do with Kawhi Leonard without ever having to fall off the playoffs, but in Bradley’s mind. Beal not being Anthony Davis, you’re really trying to get James Wiseman into the Kawhi Leonard conversation.

Chances are, by the time Wiseman and whoever comes from the Minnesota pick are ready to lead a contender, Curry, Thompson and Green will no longer be. For me, that’s too big a risk to take when you have Stephen Curry on your team. Trading for Lonzo may be a good start, but if the Warriors are serious about doing good through Curry – whether it’s trying to enter Beal’s seemingly inevitable draw or getting creative through another lane – they will have to think much bigger. only that.