I can’t help but think we’ve seen these Warriors before.
And no, it wasn’t during a championship season.
I imagine many of you have blissfully forgotten the Dubs’ 2021 campaign, but it’s evident that Warriors coach Steve Kerr hasn’t.
Amid a season heading off the rails, he has stolen the blueprint of that ’21 season to return the Warriors to respectability.
But ultimately, respectability seems like the extent of what can be achieved.
The 2021 Warriors started their COVID-shortened sprint of a regular season with a 23-27 record. That was an improvement from the year prior, when the Warriors were the worst team in the league, but it was still a major disappointment for a team that had Draymond Green and Steph Curry and had traded for Andrew Wiggins the previous February.
Those Dubs lacked a rhythm, an identity, and any sense of cohesion. James Wiseman, the No. 2 overall pick in the prior year’s draft, wasn’t a fit. Kelly Oubre a late offseason acquisition signed to fill the vacancy left by Klay Thompson, who was missing a second consecutive season to injury, was a disaster. Things were falling apart in the critical stretch of the season — the Warriors lost all but five of 18 games between March and early April (the season ended in mid-May.)
Desperate times called for desperate measures. With roughly a month to play, Kerr made three significant moves.
He shortened his rotation to eight players, ostensibly dumping Oubre (Wiseman was injured) and replacing him with Mychal Mulder and a kid named Jordan Poole.
He inserted Juan Toscano-Anderson into the rotation, as well.
But the most crucial change was making Green the team’s starting center. The Warriors were going to play small-ball down the stretch.
Remind you of anything?
That Warriors team looked good down the home stretch, going 15-5 to end the regular season, including six straight wins at home to end. Curry went thermonuclear, averaging 37 points over his final 22 games.
The Warriors made the play-in tournament, but lost both games.
They ran out of gas.
And that’s my fear with this season’s Warriors, too.
Now, it should be noted that these Dubs are in a much different situation. They’re deeper. They’re more talented.
But they started sprinting on Jan. 27 — the game Kerr made Green the team’s starting center — and they need to make it to mid-April to merely make the postseason. And we saw some sputtering this week.
The Warriors’ loss to the Clippers on Wednesday and near-loss to the Jazz on Thursday showed a team pushing up against its limits. This, like the 2021 team, is a one-trick pony. It’s a hell of a trick, but can it get them to the finish line?
And if it can, will it take them any further?
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The good news is that these Warriors have Thompson in the fold. Whether he’s coming off the bench, as he did Thursday, or in the starting lineup, he’s a quality NBA player. (Whatever you want to say about Thompson, that much is true.) Chris Paul should return to the fold after the All-Star break, too. Jonathan Kuminga and Brandin Podziemski look like they’ll be solid — if not stellar — NBA players for the next decade.
The overall quality is markedly better than in ’21.
Remember: The 2021 Warriors were relying on Poole; Mulder, who played 17 NBA games after that season; Kent Bazemore, a starter for that stretch, played 39 more games; and JTA, who, while a positive player for that Dubs team, hasn’t found a serious role since.
So yeah, a little different than two Hall of Famers (albeit in the twilights of their careers) and two promising players 21 and under.
But the formula for success is still the same. While other teams rely on their talent to make the playoffs in the regular season, the Warriors are working for their spot in the postseason.
And they’re working hard. These last few weeks have been a grind.
It’s a shame such effort is novel in this league — it certainly makes for a better product — but there’s a reason most teams coast: They want to have something in the tank for the “real” season.
Even though these Warriors are more talented than the ’21 edition, they have to work as hard as them for roughly the same results.
And they will probably have to exert that effort for longer.
Curry cannot cool down from his latest stint of insane play. Kuminga and Podziemski can’t hit walls. Paul has to seamlessly reintegrate. Thompson might have to be a bench player.
But it’s Green is going to bear the brunt of this effort.
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The Warriors are a game over .500 at the break, holding the final spot in the play-in tournament. To make the real playoffs (a top-six seed) and avoid a possible one-and-done scenario, they’ll need to win close to 20 of their 29 games remaining.
It’s a big ask for their big man. I don’t care how much basketball IQ you have — taking on 7-footers is tough when you’re only 6-foot-6.
Green at center was Kerr’s Get Out of Jail Free card during the team’s salad days. Tough game? Put in Draymond at the 5 — the contest was over in a flash.
But there’s a reason it was only used sparingly — every minute at the 5 is a tough minute for the Dubs’ big man. The idea for years was that playing Green at center would be a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency situation.
Kerr has changed his tune on that since Green returned from suspension.
“[But] He’s a little bit older, and we don’t have a good team around him,” Kerr added. “I think the 5 is really the perfect spot for him, where he is in his career, and where the league is and how everyone is playing.”
Maybe it’s passive-aggressive punishment; maybe this is such an emergency. Either way — or both ways — Green playing 30-plus minutes a night at the 5 is the best option for these Warriors to play winning basketball.
The good news is that the Warriors’ season has improved dramatically since Green returned. Of course it has.
The bad news is that it might not be sustainable enough to make this season one to remember.
