It felt like the end, again.
The Golden State Warriors missed the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, but they stormed back from the abyss in 2022 to beat the Boston Celtics in the NBA finals. Steph Curry was 33 for most of that season. Draymond Green and Klay Thompson were 31. The Warriors’ return to the pinnacle of basketball had the whiff of a last hurrah, and indeed, their championship core faded for a second time after that: a second-round exit in 2023, a play-in tournament flatlining in 2024. Curry and his four-time championship-winning teammates continued to get older in the way athletes do.
Last year’s missed postseason was a crossroads. Thompson left in free agency for the Dallas Mavericks. Curry and Green returned for what would be their age-36 and age-34 seasons, but these Warriors, the ones that collected all those titles under Steve Kerr, were finally cooked. They had to be.
Or did they? Golden State are now the hottest team in basketball as the playoffs approach. They have 14 wins and three losses since 13 February. That stretch began one week after they made a blockbuster wing swap with the Miami Heat, trading Andrew Wiggins for Jimmy Butler. The move saw Golden State send away a key player of their second championship core, Wiggins, for a player who looks poised to be part of a third iteration under Curry and the still-trucking Steve Kerr. The Warriors were tied for 10th in the Western Conference on the day of the Butler trade, looking ticketed for the play-in again. Now they’re up to sixth and looking, at least for the moment, like an honest title contender.
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The Butler trade is a convenient start point for the turnaround. Butler has not even found his jump shot yet; he has made 22.7% of his three-pointers as a Warrior and has struggled to make baskets from all over the floor. However, Butler has five all-defensive team honors to his name and is still a hellacious defender at 35. The Warriors have allowed 107.6 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, a defensive rating that would make them roughly the best defensive team in the NBA if the team maintained those numbers all the time. (Without Butler, Golden State have allowed 113.1 points per 100 trips.)
Those numbers stand in stark contrast to those of Wiggins, who had arguably been a drag on the team by the end of his time in the Bay. This season, Golden State have posted a net rating 7.2 points better when he was off the floor than when he was on it. Butler has reversed that, with the Warriors doing 9.4 points better per 100 possessions when he’s on the floor than not.
Despite not finding his shooting form yet, Butler has not gummed up Golden State’s offense, which scores roughly the same amount when he’s off or on the court. Imagine his usefulness once the shots start falling more frequently.
But while Butler has been a swell addition, the thing that really makes Golden State tick has not changed. Curry remains a marvel and has arguably been carrying more of a load than ever this year. His 32 minutes per game are a bit below his career average, sensible for a player who turned 37 this month. But these are intense minutes, with Curry using up 30% of the Warriors’ offensive possessions, a higher rate than he did 10 years ago. Kerr gave him a night off last week and said his star point guard was “exhausted.”
Managing Curry going forward will make or break Golden State’s chances of making another deep playoff run. Curry took a hard fall on Thursday against Toronto and exited the game with what the team called a pelvic contusion. While it doesn’t sound like Curry will miss much time, there are no minor injuries for 37-year-olds who are trying to lead NBA teams to championships. The 11-time All-Star has been playing inspired ball in this second-to-last year of his contract (and maybe of his career, though that depends on whether Curry wants to quit before a major decline).
Though the Warriors have been on a great run, they won’t really contend for another finals appearance unless they get serious offensive contributions from someone other than Curry. Some regression to the mean with Butler’s shot-making will help, but the Warriors’ offensive cupboard is not well stocked. The only other rotation regular averaging more than 11.3 points per game is bench forward Jonathan Kuminga, who is having the least efficient shooting season of his four-year career. Other than Curry and Butler, there is a good argument that Golden State do not have even one above-average offensive player. There is a lot of promise, though, in free-throw magnets Butler and Kuminga spending eternity at the foul line.
To what extent can Golden State keep rolling like they have the past month and a half? The Warriors have something here. The fun of the past few weeks has been learning that the magic of the Curry-Kerr Warriors is not yet depleted, even with Thompson now playing in north Texas. Green isn’t the player he used to be, but he is still useful, and the Warriors are better when he’s playing than when he isn’t. When Green is the primary defender within two feet of a shooter, those shooters make 38.1% of their shots – less than they made against Green 10 years ago, when he was in his heyday.
Kerr has been adept at finding good role players to round out a roster whose salary cap is eaten up rapidly by Curry and his aging buddies. This year has been no different, with the Warriors getting lots of useful bench minutes out of players that a lot of basketball fans have barely heard of. The team has stayed above water when giving minutes to bench power forward Gui Santos, the 55th overall pick in 2022, who spent two years averaging 14 points per game in the G-League. Guards Moses Moody and Brandin Podziemski, first-round picks in 2021 and 2023, have become significant reserve contributors the past two years. That backcourt youth movement has been more helpful this year than Buddy Hield, the veteran shooting guard whose salary dwarfs theirs but whose production has not.
The Warriors who won the title in 2022 did so by managing to bridge the gap between Curry and their future. Golden State are trying to repeat that trick now, and they may have just enough in the tank to make it happen again. Curry will be the straw that stirs the franchise’s drink until the moment he retires, but the past few years, Golden State lacked enough ingredients to create anything interesting. But now that Butler has walked through the door, the Warriors – for the first time in three years – are impossible to ignore as we go deeper into the spring. As usual, there’s an unshakeable feeling that we’re watching this happen for the last time. But with Curry, Butler, and Green all under team control next year, too, perhaps it’s time to stop assuming that the laws of gravity apply to Golden State.
