San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Can team fit familiar 3 pieces together?
For the first time as a healthy unit, head coach Steve Kerr’s Golden State Warriors find themselves with nothing to do in mid-April except to start working on the puzzle. Trying to fit pieces together, figuring out what will click into place and create the big picture.
“It’s all part of the puzzle,” general manager Mike Dunleavy said.
The puzzle analogy came up a few times in Thursday’s post mortem of a season that started with hope and ended abruptly in disappointment.
But a team isn’t just a random group of pieces that can be snapped together. A team is a living, human thing. And some of the pieces don’t fit in neatly. Some of the edges are worn and blistered by emotions and loyalties, memories and legacies.
Can they still fit together? Does it still work?
That’s what the Warriors face this offseason. Big questions. Big decisions. With a big emotional component attached to all of them.
And the biggest, hardest questions involve the Core Three: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. Only one — the untouchable Curry — has both great value to other teams and an absolutely certain future with the Warriors.
It seems highly probable that all three are back — Dunleavy termed it “somewhat doable” — but this is an offseason where almost everything will be in play.
“It would be a really hard dilemma if they weren’t still good players,” Kerr said. “Maybe in a couple years we’ll be having this discussion where they’re not as effective and it becomes more of a ceremonial thing.
“I do think there’s tremendous value in the three of them being Warriors for life. It matters to our fans, it matters to our franchise. So I hope it happens. Fortunately, right now they’re all still good.”
They are, all three, still good. Not the transcendent players they were a few years ago — the past selves they continue to be measured against, both by an outside world and by their own towering standards.
But there is no doubt that their truest value is as a group. They are the hooping illustration of a whole being greater
than the sum of its parts. They are more valuable to each other, to the Warriors, to the fan base, than they could ever be were they separated and strewn across the league.
Could Thompson land somewhere as a free agent and make more money than perhaps the Warriors want to give him? Undoubtedly. And he’d be stripped away from his beloved Bay Area, from his comfort zone, from a fan base that adores his quirks and forgives his flaws. If he failed in a new market, he would be miserable.
Could a team find value in Green as a smart, veteran leader to shore up its defense? Possibly. But Green’s case is trickier because he has severely damaged his own brand, his own reputation as a leader, and would likely never find the synergy with new teammates like he has with Curry.
Thompson will be a free agent (and has to be happy that his 0-for-10 shooting night Tuesday in Sacramento technically doesn’t exist in any statistical category — play-in stats magically, poof!, disappear). Dunleavy said he told Thompson on Tuesday the team wants him back.
“Certainly, we want Klay back, first and foremost,” Dunleavy said.
But it’s impossible to hear what Dunleavy says and assume that’s what will actually happen. In last season’s aftermath, he said he valued Jordan Poole. Three days later, Poole was gone.
Considering that, Dunleavy’s answer, when I asked him about Green, was interesting. In the aftermath of the Sacramento loss, Green, surprisingly, cast a tiny bit of doubt over his own future, when answering a question about Chris Paul, saying, “I hope and pray that he’s back and that I’m back.” On Thursday, ESPN published a piece on how Green’s “volatility” is wearing on people in the organization.
“In terms of having him back, I think very, very high likelihood,” Dunleavy said. “I can’t imagine a scenario where he’s not back. Could be wrong, but — man — he’s signed under contract, we value him, he’s a core piece of what we do. So, fully expect him to be back. I think we won over 60% of the games he played in this year, so you know how meaningful he is to winning.”
There’s wiggle room in that answer. And the phrase “of the games he played in” provides critical context. This season was the ultimate Draymond Green experience: Can’t live with him, can’t win without him. His suspensions were the biggest reason the Warriors found themselves in such a hole. His return was the biggest reason the Warriors played like one of the best teams in the league for the past two-plus months of the regular season. You could, once again, lay the Warriors’ failure at Green’s size 15 shoes.
Kerr’s answer to my Green question was over five minutes long and full of nuance and insight.
“I have so much faith in Draymond because I know him so well as a human being,” Kerr said. “He’s flawed. We’re all flawed. But he would be the first to tell you that he’s probably more flawed than the rest of us.
“He’s one of the most loyal, competitive, smartest people I’ve ever been around. And yet he makes these decisions that hurt the team. That aren’t smart. So how do you reconcile all that? It’s really difficult. If we decided he wasn’t worth it, then we would have moved off him years ago.
“But he’s worth it. And not only because of the banners hanging out there but because he really is a wonderful human being. Somebody who I love deeply.”
Kerr reiterated that Green’s increasingly violent actions — going beyond yelling at officials — broke the basic norms of society. Kerr was skeptical that Green would return from his suspension changed, but said that in the past three months, Green has been the best version of himself. Kerr was even accepting of the incident in Orlando last month, when Green was kicked out of a game, because Green’s passion makes the Warriors so much better that “you kind of have to accept that he’s going to get kicked out a few games a year.”
When reminded that he called the action “unforgivable,” Kerr smiled.
“And, yet, I forgave him,” he said.
Green’s career will continue to hang in the balance, another reason another team might have no interest in trading for a player who could self-destruct at any moment.
“Draymond is complex, his relationship with our franchise is complex,” Kerr said. “But at the core of it is a deep loyalty and passion and love, and we share that with him. That’s tricky to reconcile, so you almost don’t even try to reconcile it.”
Loyalty, love and passion — those are all parts of the puzzle. Intangible and unmeasurable but important components.
But the pieces don’t fit as seamlessly as they once did.