Changes to team will come through buyouts
OAKLAND » The Warriors might have issues lately with their consistency and effort. But none of that sparked enough concern for the Warriors to make any moves before the NBA trade deadline passed on Thursday.
“It’s a little bit of a misnomer that when you don’t do something, the thought is, ‘ You didn’t try,’ ” Warriors general manager Bob Myers said. “Nothing made sense. We still do like what we have quite a bit.”
The Warriors have the NBA’s best record after all. They also have a starstudded roster featuring Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson. Even after winning two NBA titles in the past three years, though, the Warriors are mindful of the need to upgrade their roster when- ever possible.
The Warriors would like to bolster their secondary scoring. Yet, the Warriors wanted to preserve cap space and their 2018 firstround pick. While the Warriors currently have a $137 million payroll, the Warriors also value their firstround pick.
“We felt it would take a lot to take that away,” Myers said of his first-round pick. “Because we are a high- salaried team, the draft is one of the few ways we can build and try to stay young, if we can. For us, it may take on greater meaning. We’re not a cap space team. I don’t see that in our near future, either.”
Myers will still have a busy job in the upcoming weeks, though. Up through March 1, NBA teams will have a chance to pick up players on the free-agent market after negotiating buyouts. The Warriors could acquire any player on a minimum-value deal so long as they waive a player on their 15-man roster. Myers noted their chances at landing a player rests on varying sets of variables, including money, playing time or a chance to win an NBA championship.
Amid the Warriors’ quest to win another NBA title, Myers said he felt speechless when a Warriors fan asked him if he felt happy about not doing anything before the trade deadline.
“I don’t know. We’ll see at the end of the year if we were right or wrong,” Myers said. “The last day of the season is when we’ll be judged. Maybe we got it right. Maybe we didn’t.”
While Myers said the Warriors “were not that active” before the trade deadline, he also sensed that “we were never the lead horse in the race we had tacitly looked at.” Part of the reason? The Warriors kept asking themselves one question.
“’Do we think this helps us in the playoffs?’ ” Myers recalled the front office saying. “Not that we devalue the regular season, but we are thankfully in a place where we’ ll make the playoffs. That’s the time where you have to look and see if we have enough. But I can’t sit here and say what the proper outcome should have been today or not.”
The Warriors have achieved that proper outcome in recent seasons, a trend that has happened for reasons beyond the team’s talent.
“We value continuity. But sometimes disruption is good. Sometimes it’s not. We’ve been good in having a pretty consistent group,” Myers said. “In basketball, I do value guys getting to know each other. Our coach values that. We put an emphasis on that and a priority on it. But that doesn’t mean you don’t explore or look at other things. But I think it helps with our familiarity.”