SAN FRANCISCO – Five Western Conference teams won 50 or more games in the 2023-24 NBA season. The Warriors weren’t one of them. They tallied 46 wins, two more than the previous season, yet dropped all the way down to the No. 10 seed while failing to make the playoffs for the first time under coach Steve Kerr with a healthy Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
Thompson departed for the Dallas Mavericks in the offseason. The Warriors fell short of adding a second star next to Curry, unable to make a deal for Paul George or Lauri Markkanen. Instead, general manager Mike Dunleavy’s patient approach formulated a historic six-team trade, adding veteran players the Warriors believe should make them a better team that can form a clear identity.
“First thing that comes to mind, just a deep, deep team,” Steve Kerr responded Tuesday in describing the Warriors ahead of Wednesday’s regular-season opener in Portland against the Trail Blazers.
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"Everybody deserves to play, [but] not everybody can."
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) October 22, 2024
Steve Kerr discusses the Warriors' depth this season pic.twitter.com/lGjTNthjnC
Kerr already has told Lindy Waters III and Gui Santos they won’t be in the rotation for the season opener. Both are players Kerr has said can, and will, help the Warriors win games. Waters shot 44 percent from 3-point range in the preseason and was one of the Warriors’ best players in plus/minus. Santos, 22, is a young player the Warriors remain high on, and his cutting ability makes him suited for almost any combination.
That’s how this iteration of the Warriors was created, though. They have 12 players vying for about 10 spots to get real playing time, and the team believes in the two who immediately are on the outside looking in. The Warriors added proven veterans in Kyle Anderson, Buddy Hield and De’Anthony Melton, who fit Kerr’s goal of being a defense-first team that launches 3-pointers and is much better in transition on both sides of the ball.
Curry is 36 years old, and will turn 37 in March. Green is 34, and will be 35 just 10 days before Curry blows out two more candles than his longtime teammate. While the search for a second established star continues, and the hope that Andrew Wiggins can get back to his All-Star form and Jonathan Kuminga can grow into the star he envisions himself as, the Warriors are made for a strong regular season where they should be pushing to be a 50-win team.
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“I think that’s going to be a strength of ours, being able to withstand injuries,” Kerr said. “I think Kyle being ready to step in for Draymond if Draymond is out, back-to-back, whatever it is. That’s a huge addition for us, because Kyle is such a good player and a similar kind of point-forward player, huge basketball IQ.
“I can go down the list, we’ve got a lot of players who can fill in if we have injuries. I’m excited.”
Steve Kerr has confidence Kyle Anderson can replace Draymond Green on the floor when needed pic.twitter.com/tC4Rt7mi1L
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) October 22, 2024
The Warriors are going to shoot threes, and a lot of them. In their undefeated 6-0 preseason, they shot 254 threes and made 97. That amounts to over 42 3-point attempts per game and more than 16 made threes per game, shooting 38.2 percent as a team, all as Curry sat two games and averaged under 20 minutes played in the preseason.
They want to be a top defensive team again after falling off the past two seasons. It’s only the preseason and all six wins will be forgotten if the Warriors get off to a slow start, but Golden State held its opponents to 40.6-percent shooting, including a lowly 25.7 percent from three and only 95.3 points. The Warriors averaged six more rebounds per game than their opponents, and blocked a total of nine more shots than them in their tune-up to the regular season.
“The premise of this thing was built on depth, and that’s what we’re going for,” Dunleavy said. “So far, so good.”
Even the Warriors know they aren’t seen as a championship contender, and behind closed doors they aren’t making plans for a victory parade quite yet. They’re the hunters, not the hunted. Their sexy factor has fallen off, easing the burden in a time where expectations still remain high because of having an all-time great in Curry, who is coming off a summer of Olympic heroics.
Words like “feisty” and “fresh” have been thrown around Chase Center for the past month. Truth be told, they’re embracing it. Competitors to their core, Curry and Green, as well as Kerr and Dunleavy, still have a checklist of the playoffs, advancing round by round and having a shot at a title. Realists will argue against the Warriors' chances, but after their grand offseason plan was nixed, they’ve created a team-wide personality that should be able to chase and steal wins.
“What I tell the players all the time is, everyone is going to judge us, but only we can really assess our success or not, or whether we’re getting better every day, whether we’re connected, whether we are fighting for each other,” Kerr said.
“All those things lead to success, and that’s what we measure every day.”
Talks of their playoff fortunes can wait. A clearer picture can be painted around the February trade deadline, depending on how new additions have fared in addition to the development of young players like Kuminga, Moses Moody, Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis. Other teams will have to fall in the Warriors’ favor, in a time where almost everybody in the West is pushing to be better than last season.
The Warriors consider themselves part of that group of improvement. Built for the regular season as currently constructed, the Warriors’ entertainment value and win totals should both see a spike.