Curry’s greatness taken for granted
Warriors are wasting a year of Steph Curry’s prime, and that’s organizational malpractice
Stephen Curry is one of the greatest players to ever grace an NBA hardwood — a once-in-ageneration force that has not only won personal accolades but also led his team to three titles.
He’s already a first-ballot Hall of Famer. If not for Wilt Chamberlain, he would already be universally considered the greatest Warrior of all time. And in his age33 season, he’s arguably playing the best basketball of his career — a level that few players in the history of the sport could ever reach.
And it’s being wasted, because the Warriors have — and are — taking Curry’s greatness for granted.
The Warriors are a middling team this season, capable of beating the league’s minnows but more often than not being smacked around by true title contenders. It’s a step up from last season’s play, which led to the worst record in the NBA, but a precipitous drop from the team’s dynastic half-decade run
between 2014 and 2019.
Curry sat out Thursday’s game in Phoenix for extra rest as the league heads into the All-Star break.
It’s a level of play that’s not befitting Curry, and he’s the only reason the Warriors are this good. Without him, the Warriors would likely have one of the worst records in the NBA again.
So long as he’s on the team, though, the Warriors will be competitive and engaging. They’ll sell tickets at Chase Center and probably make the playoffs. But on their current path, it’s hard to see them ever hanging another banner in that arena.
And, worse yet, it seems as if that is part of the plan.
Now, the Warriors effectively conceded any chance of seriously competing for a title since Klay Thompson tore his Achilles tendon in November. And while defeatism has never accomplished anything, it is an understandable stance to take. There’s only so much you can do when your secondbest player — the 10th highest-paid player in the NBA — is sidelined for a season.
But the flip side of that is a presumption of serious contention when Thompson returns next season. His addition would no doubt be large — this year’s Warriors desperately miss him — but in that regard, the Dubs are writing checks I’m not sure they can cash.
The Warriors’ loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday night was a perfect encapsulation of the problem. In the closing minutes of that game — one Golden State squandered — the Warriors had Kent Bazemore and Juan Toscano-Anderson on the court.
To be clear, both players have been a positive for the Warriors this season (perhaps only because of low expectations), and yes, Golden State was down Kelly Oubre Jr. on Wednesday. But those players are on a veteran minimum contract and a two-way deal for a reason.
Meanwhile, Portland, still down their second and third-best players — CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkić — countered with Carmelo Anthony and Gary Trent.
That’s a former scoring champion, who can still give you 20 points per game off the bench at age 36 (and who is signed to a minimum contract), and Trent, who knocks down 40 percent of his 3-pointers in his third year in the league, and was taken nine picks after Jacob Evans in the 2018 NBA draft. (Also taken after Evans, but before Trent: Jalen Brunson, Devonte Graham, Mitchell Robinson, and Bruce Brown, all quality NBA players. Meanwhile, Evans in on a G League contract.)
Portland is not a team that’s going to compete for a title, but they were unquestionably a deeper team than the Warriors on Wednesday. They have developed draft picks into quality NBA players and, despite having more stringent financial limitations than the Warriors, have found creative solutions in free agency.
Years of failing to do that have compounded and leave the Warriors in a precarious situation.
Thompson might change the paradigm a bit moving forward. Perhaps Wiggins thrives in the No. 3 role, Green continues to do his Magic Johnson impression, and Curry turns out to be basketball’s Tom Brady.
It’s possible.
But how many years can they collectively keep that up? Remember, Thompson is coming off two catastrophic leg injuries. If he wasn’t a player known for his explosiveness
before, what happens if he lacks some of it after his return? And what happens when Curry has only 18 weeks of rest between seasons, as opposed to the 18 months he effectively had between the start of the 2019-20 season and the start of this campaign? And we’re seeing Green’s offensive deterioration in real-time. What happens with another season of wear-and-tear? And what if this is Wiggins’ ceiling — a strong defender with no force on the offensive end.
Greatness is not eternal, even for Curry, and wasting even one of these MVP-caliber seasons is organizational malpractice.
The Warriors’ real issue goes down to the roots. If those core players fall, in any way, who is there to pick them up?
Golden State has selected 11 players in the draft since 2015, and has three NBA-caliber players — James Wiseman, Eric Paschall, and Kevon Looney. Don’t blame where they were selecting — you can’t shoot 27 percent and expect to build a quality roster. Not when there are All-Star-caliber players that are found post-lottery every season.
And given the fact that Curry is the highestpaid player in the NBA, Thompson checks in at No. 10, Wiggins is owed $95 million over the next three years and Green $77 million over the same span, creativity and some fearlessness is a must when building a team around the salary cap. Where are those characteristics evident on this Warriors’ roster?
And why should anyone expect either trend to change?
When you have neither the collective star power — Draymond Green is not a No. 2 scorer and Andrew Wiggins isn’t an alpha or a beta on the offensive end, he’s a gamma — and you can’t boast ‘Strength In Numbers’, you get a team that’s going into the All-Star break with a play-in tournament spot, and that’s only thanks to Curry.
The Warriors have been taking a long-term approach to team-building in the post-Kevin Durant era.
But instead of maximizing every season they have with him — instead of realizing that they will never draft another player of his caliber, even if they keep picking early (remember, Wiggins was the unquestioned No. 1 overall pick and won Rookie of the Year in a landslide) — this team seems more focused on their core in 2027, Wiseman and whomever they select with the Minnesota draft pick that came with Wiggins.
The idea is that the Warriors will blend the old core with the new, extending the Warriors’ run of competence into the next decade. Somewhere in the middle, there will be title contention. It’s the Spurs model, except it presumes either a fast development time for the young players or a prolonged peak for the aging core. Plus, the Warriors don’t have the next Kawhi Leonard in tow and any presumption that they’ll draft him with that Minnesota pick is hubris at best.
But sure, stick with that plan.
Long-term competence — making the playoffs year after year — might be good for ticket sales, but the NBA is an allin league and the Warriors’ have raised their fans’ expectations skyhigh. Making the playoffs might have been acceptable in the pre-Curry days, but now the only goal is winning titles. Stack as many of them as you can. Fill the rafters with banners.
Worry about 2027 down the line. Go all-in with — and for — this franchisechanging player.
And if you fail in the process of winning those titles, at least you didn’t waste any of an all-time great player’s prime years.
People tend to be in one of four categories: those who prefer cats to dogs, those who prefer dogs to cats, and those who like or dislike both. However, few are as funny about it as August Strindberg, a Swedish dramatist, who said, “I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.”
Bridge is a dogfight for every trick. Look upon defeat in a contract as a catastrophe. Against South’s fourheart contract, West led the spade king and switched accurately to a trump. How should declarer have continued?
That trump switch was annoying because the defenders were threatening to take three spades and one heart. After, say, a club shift, declarer could have ruffed a spade in the dummy.
South’s first thought was to take his two top trumps and start on the diamonds. If the defender with the last trump had at least three diamonds, declarer could have discarded a spade loser and made it home.
However, there was a much safer play available. South let West win the second trick! In this way, the defenders got their heart winner while there was still a trump on the board to ruff the third spade if the defenders went back to that suit.
If you didn’t spot that play, your partner would catapult you to the doghouse. He might also start doggedly to catalog your errors, and, without fear of catcalls from my readers, I can dogmatically state that that duck is the cat’s meow, doggone it! BRIDGE