The minute Steph Curry walked to the locker room holding his hand Wednesday night at Chase Center, almost everyone had the same thought: If Curry is going to miss an extended period of time, it's time for the Warriors to tank.
Apparently, Dubs owner Joe Lacob wasn't on Twitter while his superstar point guard was being diagnosed with a broken left hand.
Curry's timetable for return is unknown, but even when he was in the lineup the Warriors ranged from mediocre to atrocious, pairing unexciting offense with porous defense while getting picked apart by the likes of the Suns.
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With Curry out for a while and Klay Thompson expected to miss the entire season, it would make sense for the Warriors to look toward the future, get a relatively high draft pick and start to rebuild their now crumpled dynasty.
The losses will come, that's for sure, but Lacob doesn't want to hear about embracing the tank.
"It is against every single thing I and we stand for," Lacob told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne on Wednesday.
"We will fight like hell. Develop our young guys. Learn to win," Lacob continued. "You don't get better by trying to lose. Our entire organization is about winning. And we will win. Some bumps in the road, perhaps. But we will never accept losing."
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After five straight runs to the NBA Finals, there will be no title run during the Warriors' first season in Chase Center. No raucous explosion after a Curry bomb to once again boot the Rockets from the playoffs. The dynasty has fallen and now it is time to rebuild.
Instead, there will be a lot of mistakes, a lot of learning and, tank or not, a lot of losses.
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That's the reality for this year's Warriors without Curry, at least for a while, and Thompson.
But they can turn that into a bright future.
Let head coach Steve Kerr develop the rookies and find which ones are best suited to be Warriors for the long term. Keep your top-20 protected first-round draft pick and get Curry, Thompson, Draymond Green and D'Angelo Russell a young star to run with.
The future starts now for the once and, hopefully, future kings of the NBA.
