Middling Warriors in similar spot as last year ahead of NBA trade deadline originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
It’s déjà vu all over again for the Warriors less than a month from the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline.
A 103-102 loss to a James Harden-less Los Angeles Clippers team Monday night, one month to the date from the deadline, dropped them to 19-18 on the season, giving the Warriors the same record through 37 games in four of the last six seasons.
The other three seasons are 2020-21 when they finished as the No. 9 seed and missed the playoffs after losing twice in the play-in tournament, 2022-23 when they were the No. 6 seed and beat the Sacramento Kings in seven games before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in six, and last season when they won their play-in game as the No. 7 seed and lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games without Steph Curry after beating the Houston Rockets in seven.
The two seasons they weren’t 19-18 were the 2021-22 championship team, in which the Warriors were 29-8 through 37 games, and 2023-24 when they went 17-20. That season ended with a play-in tournament blowout loss to the Kings in Sacramento that also was Klay Thompson’s final game with the Warriors.
Hope didn’t start for the Warriors last season until the trade deadline after acquiring Jimmy Butler. But the Warriors were stuck in the blocks at the beginning of the race and sprinted to the end to try and catch up. Their superstar who will be 38 years old at the start of this season’s playoffs couldn’t make it through the finish line.
Curry’s strained hamstring put a stop to the Warriors’ puncher’s chance of making a run at another ring. He’s averaging 28.7 points per game in Year 17, the fourth highest of his career, and ranks ninth in the league. Of the eight players ahead of him, Nikola Jokić, 31 on Feb. 19, is the only one who’s in his 30s.
The first and most obvious avenue for improvement this season starts the day Jonathan Kuminga becomes trade eligible on Jan. 15. The summer saga of Kuminga’s restricted free agency has turned into him holding a $22.5 million contract on the bench as he watches games in warmup gear. Kuminga played 21 and a half minutes against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Dec. 6 and then was a healthy DNP (Did Not Play) in the Warriors’ next three games, going 1-2.
Coach Steve Kerr raved about a string of practices Kuminga put together and said he would be rewarded in the Warriors’ Dec. 18 game against the Phoenix Suns. The Warriors lost by one point and Kuminga played nine and a half minutes where he scored two points on 1-of-5 shooting and had four rebounds.
Kuminga was ruled inactive with an illness two nights later against the Suns and was back to being a healthy DNP in five straight games. Kerr said Kuminga was going to be in the rotation against the Oklahoma City Thunder but he was a late addition to the injury report with lower back soreness and missed a game the Warriors also were down Curry, Butler and Draymond Green. Kuminga has been a healthy DNP in the two games since.
The Warriors are 9-9 in games Kuminga has played this season, and 10-9 without him.
League sources told NBC Sports Bay Area the Kings, Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards all have different levels of interest in Kuminga. The Dallas Mavericks, who initiated contact with the Warriors about their thoughts on trading for Anthony Davis, as The Athletic’s Sam Amick first reported, also like Kuminga, sources confirmed. But the Mavericks do not have interest in Green, whose $25.8 million contract would be needed in a deal to get Davis, who’s making $54.1 million.
And the Warriors also haven’t shown any interest in trading Butler, another big contract that would land Davis, one year later.
The Mavs badly want to get off Davis’ contract ahead of him being eligible for a $275 million max deal next summer, and draft picks are more enticing. Teams like the New Orleans Pelicans and Brooklyn Nets are eyeing the future and will want draft compensation more than anything for their best players who could be available. One league source speculated Trey Murphy’s price tag would cost giving the Pelicans three first-round picks, and two to the Nets for Michael Porter Jr., if either player is available.
Letting go of draft picks while also knowing what the post-Curry era could look like is the Warriors’ best bet of adding a big enough piece to really compete. How far will they go?
The Warriors own their future first-round pick in every year aside from 2030, which they can trade the rights to that year only if it lands in the top 20. They have three unprotected firsts, the ability to swap in three other years and the protected pick in 2030 over the next seven drafts.
The Butler move made Curry believe again. Can he believe the Warriors in their current construction right now are championship material?
Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy joined NBC Sports Bay Area’s Bonta Hill, Chris Mullin and Festus Ezeli on “Warriors Pregame Live” before Golden State’s eventual 120-97 win against the Orlando Magic two weeks ago and poured water on the idea of making a move as big as last year’s Butler acquisition. Kerr recently also spoke publicly on the precautionary tales of teams that went all-in for a star and now don’t have any future first-round picks.
“We’ll look to do stuff that makes our team better,” Dunleavy said. “But I wouldn’t bank on that type of move. To get a guy like Jimmy Butler, to have the improvement that we did … that’d be pretty unrealistic.”
The Warriors went 23-8 with Butler down the stretch last season. Their record was one game below .500 at the trade deadline, and the season ended in the second round of the playoffs after Curry’s injury.
Even if the Warriors don’t make a move to the magnitude of Butler, this year’s situation is similar in the way of addition by subtraction, and the sentiment is shared despite them liking the players who make up the bottom half of the roster. The Warriors lost four players and brought in one with Butler. Aside from his talent, the move allowed the Warriors to solidify roles and rotations much better.
If the Warriors can move multiple players for one who would be in their top four every night, “that would make things a lot easier [for them], it’s kind of what happened last year,” one league source said.
Kerr still is using 12 guys, and Kuminga isn’t one of them, with 14 players healthy. Open roster spots would open a lane to a standard contract for Pat Spencer, and the Warriors might have big help, literally, in waiting from their Santa Cruz G League affiliate.
Charles Bassey, a 6-foot-10, 230-pound center/power forward was a former top high school recruit and second-round pick in the 2021 draft who has 115 games of NBA experience, including two this season. Santa Cruz traded for Bassey, 25, on Dec. 27 and in 26.4 minutes per game he has averaged 17.6 points, 11 rebounds and 3.4 blocked shots through his first five games with a 60.3 field goal percentage and 45.5 3-point percentage.
His last three games have been some crazy box scores, and Bassey’s energy and effort jumps out. First, he went for 17 points, 17 rebounds and six blocked shots on New Year’s Eve and then dropped 34 points on 13 of 21 from the field and 3 of 6 on threes, 13 rebounds and two blocked shots. Bassey in Santa Cruz’s most recent game went for 14 points, 15 rebounds and another three blocked shots. The Sea Dubs won all three games.
“He’s an NBA player,” one source said.
“He still is,” another source said. “All that stuff is real.”
Like Kevin Knox last year, though, Bassey isn’t eligible for a two-way contract. Teams started being able to sign players to 10-day contracts on Jan. 5. As Bassey has impressed the Warriors, the big man is sure to be on other teams’ radars outside of them as well with rosters soon to be in flux.
More traction to Kuminga’s market is going to come the closer we get to Jan. 15, starting a three-week window to the trade deadline. Both sides agree it’s best to move forward and on from each other. The Warriors’ picture of what team they’ll be to make another run should become clearer in the next four weeks, and likely sooner, just like a year ago.
