Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m pretty sure you didn’t watch the best college basketball game of Wednesday night.
In today’s SI:AM:
🌉 Warriors’ tough spot
🌪️ Iowa State’s statement win
🐍 Inside look at free agency
What are they going to do?
The Golden State Warriors are faced with a big decision as the NBA trade deadline looms. Stephen Curry and Draymond Green will turn 37 and 35, respectively, in March, and the team will have to choose whether to swing for the fences and try to maximize the final years of their stars’ careers or stand pat and plan for the future.
The Warriors are currently 20–20 after Wednesday night’s win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, good for 10th place in the Western Conference. It’s an unfortunately familiar situation for the Warriors, who have finished higher than sixth in the conference just once in the past five seasons. The NBA’s new-ish postseason format, with the seventh- through 10th-place teams competing in the play-in tournament, gives Golden State some wiggle room, but this current version of the team has proven itself to be thoroughly mediocre over the first half of the season.
Golden State’s offense has been uncharacteristically stagnant, ranking 21st in the league in points per 100 possessions. That’s the franchise’s worst ranking in that metric since the lost 2019–20 season, when Klay Thompson missed the entire year with a torn ACL and Curry played just five games due to a hand injury. The Warriors’ offensive struggles this season shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, considering the team allowed Thompson to leave as a free agent. Buddy Hield hasn’t been able to provide the same kind of streaky scoring that Thompson did, and De’Anthony Melton, another sharpshooter signed this offseason, tore his ACL just six games into the season.
Melton was then traded in December as part of the deal that brought Dennis Schröder to the Warriors. That’s the only move Golden State has made this season, but could a bigger deal be on the horizon? Curry, Green and coach Steve Kerr don’t sound too keen on the prospect.
“Desperate trades or desperate moves that deplete the future, there is a responsibility on allowing or keeping the franchise in a good space and good spot when it comes to where we leave this thing when we’re done,” Curry said Monday. “Doesn’t mean that you’re not trying to get better. It doesn’t mean that you’re not active in any type of search to, if you have an opportunity where a trade makes sense or even in the summer free agency [move] makes sense. You want to continue to get better.
“Nobody wants to be stale or be in a situation where you’re passing up opportunities. But it doesn’t mean that you’re desperate, just flinging assets all around the place just because you want to do something.”
Curry was responding to comments Green made in an interview with Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports, in which Green said that he, Curry and Kerr “all disagree with mortgaging off the future of this organization.”
“Bad teams do that. Bad organizations do that. We’re not neither one,” Green added.
Kerr said basically the same thing, telling The Athletic on Monday, “you have to be realistic organizationally about where you are. And you have to mind what’s coming ahead in the future. I probably won’t be around, but I would tell you, if this organization gave away the next six or seven drafts for a wild swing, that would be the most irresponsible thing that they could do.”
The subtext here is that there is a superstar out on the trade market right now who could easily turn the Warriors’ season around: Jimmy Butler. But trading multiple draft picks and players for a 35-year-old who can become a free agent after the season is exactly the kind of move that Curry, Green and Kerr are cautioning against.
Curry clarified his stance after Wednesday’s win, saying that the Warriors aren’t “complacent.”
“That 24-hour news cycle is hilarious at times,” Curry said postgame on ESPN. “Nobody is complacent here. Nobody is okay with just being average. All the Twitter fingers who’s got deals that we need to make can kind of just shut up a little bit and let us figure this thing out. We know we can be competitive.”
In his press conference later, Curry added, “Anybody who thinks that I'm okay with being on an average basketball team is insane.
“I still stand on [Monday’s comments] but that doesn’t mean you’re not in a situation where you’re trying to get better and make appropriate moves that help you do that.”
The Warriors have three weeks to figure out what they’re going to do, whether that’s pull off a blockbuster at the expense of their future or make incremental changes with less long-term downside, but also less short term upside. It’s a fascinating spot for the team to be in. Golden State has been the defining franchise of the NBA’s past decade. What the Warriors do over these next three weeks could determine what their next decade looks like.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- With eight teams left in the NFL playoffs, Mitch Goldich ranks all 16 potential Super Bowl matchups.
- Conor Orr breaks down what makes a pair of relatively unheralded NFL assistant coaches hot head coaching candidates this cycle.
- Albert Breer explains in his latest mailbag why it isn’t outlandish to think that Jerry Jones could lure Texas coach Steve Sarkisian to the Cowboys.
- Corbin Burnes gave Tom Verducci a fascinating inside look at his 57-day free agent process.
- The NCAA is finally getting with the times and awarding financial incentives to women’s basketball tournament teams. Bryan Fischer has more on the organization’s historic decision.
- Bob Harig spoke with the new CEO of LIV Golf, who’s replacing the controversial Greg Norman.
- Kevin Sweeney was in Ames for Iowa State’s big top-10 showdown with Kansas in which the Cyclones asserted themselves as the best team in the Big 12.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. Ja Morant’s ridiculous dunk over Victor Wembanyama. (It didn’t count because a foul was called on the floor.)
4. Zach Edey’s powerful dunk on Wemby—that did count. Despite getting posterized twice, Wembanyama actually had a great night defensively. He blocked eight shots in the first half.
3. The small child who ran on the court during the final moments of a very close college basketball game.
2. Connor McDavid’s nifty goal to move into No. 2 on the Oilers’ all-time points list. (No. 1 belongs to Wayne Gretzky, of course.)
1. UMass guard Rahsool Diggins’s 46 points in a triple-overtime win over Fordham. The game, marking the 100th anniversary of Fordham’s Rose Hill Gym, was the longest in the arena’s history.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Mediocre Warriors Face Colossal Trade Deadline Decision.