The Warriors can only blame themselves

Getting old and slow is a choice, not an inevitability

On June 25, 2009 the Warriors won the lottery.

That was the day when then-NBA commissioner David Stern stepped to the mic and said something to the effect of, “With the seventh pick of the 2009 NBA draft, the Golden State Warriors select Wardell Stephen Curry.”

The choice was no slam dunk. In fact, some very knowledgeable hoopheads considered Curry a big mistake. He has enjoyed reading his pre-draft scouting report aloud for years.

Too skinny, doesn’t handle the ball well (!) rushes shots.

But nobody, anywhere, had any idea that Curry would become a transcendent player. An epic, clutch champion. An icon.

After Curry spent two pretty miserable losing seasons with the team, the Dubs drafted Klay Thompson with the 11th pick. Again, a guard out of lightly regarded Washington State was not a sure thing.

Thompson turned out to be a surreal shooter of the basketball.

And, a year later, when — to his everlasting irritation — Draymond Green was chosen in the SECOND round of the draft.

And with the help of a guy who had never coached before, things changed.

Curry and Thompson turned out to be those chosen few who can not only do it, but do it night after night after night. Green was the perfect wingman, relentlessly setting screens and looking for them for every pass.

And it was good.

No need to finish that fairy tale. Five consecutive NBA Finals appearances. Four titles. World acclaim.

But time and age are undefeated. And now Klay, whimsical and sensitive, is gone to Dallas. Green takes off the second game of most back-to-backs.

And the Steph Curry Experience, where an opponent ignores the ball completely and focuses only on #30, has become a sad NBA comedy routine.

Now we hear things like what Hall of Fame former-Warrior Chris Mullen offered up this week: “The Warriors are not able to get by these younger guys.”

Honestly, when this group takes the court against the new wave of young, fast, ball-skilled players, it looks like they are playing different sports.

The Warriors are a .500 team and likely to stay that way. We’d all applaud a blockbuster trade that would rock the cosmos, but realistically that seems improbable.

First, what do they have to trade? Once that Curry-Klay-Draymond core was established, the franchise has mostly filled in with veteran journeymen. In the glory days, some good, older players — like Otto Porter — were willing to sign for a veteran minimum salary, for a chance at a ring.

But now, in the stinging words of Charles Barkley, the roster is “a bunch of JAGs.” A JAG, Barkley said, is “just another guy.”

The question is: how did they get here? And, is it the inevitable pull of time and space, or could this slow spiral have been avoided?

I’m going to say the latter. They might not have stayed on top, but they could have been better than middle of the pack.

Are there reasons? Sure, they are written down, right here:

THE BIG WHIFF

We will talk about the draft in a minute. The Warriors’ defense on draft picks has been that, well, when you win as often as we do, you draft at the bottom.

True.

But after the disastrous 2019-20 season, when Steph broke his hand five games into the season and missed the rest of the year, the Warrior had a shot at the second pick in the next draft.

They missed.

James Wiseman was the Trey Lance of basketball — almost no meaningful experience before the pro game.

He had all the numbers and glitter — 6-11, 240 Gatorade National (high school) Player of the Year — but almost zero experience in high-level games. His whole career at Memphis amounted to three games before he was suspended for recruiting violations.

To be honest, if you look at that year’s NBA draft list, it’s a little hard do come up with who the Warriors should have drafted instead. Anthony Edwards is the standout star, but he was taken with the first pick, so he was gone. You can argue for LaMelo Ball, the next pick, but that’s agreeing to take on a level of drama that has continued to follow to this day.

As far as I saw, we never really got a good explanation of what was wrong with Wiseman. He ran the floor gracefully, which not every big man does. He blocked some shots and finished some lobs. He even made some threes. I couldn’t see why a team that employed JaVale McGee for two years couldn’t find a way to use him.

But what do I know? Wiseman was shipped out, has had a really bad run of injuries — including a ruptured achilles in October — and is likely to be released at the end of the year.

Certainly, you draft players who aren’t what you expected or hoped, but with the second pick in a draft you can’t swing and miss. That was a golden opportunity gone missing.

THEY DON’T DRAFT WELL

Again, at one point they were consistently drafting at the bottom of the rounds, but the lack of production is stark.

Since 2016, when they picked Patrick McCaw, 18 first and second round choices have yielded two real impact players — Jordan Poole and (maybe) Jonathan Kuminga. The Jacob Evans’ and Patrick Baldwin’s are more representative of their first rounders.

But maybe who they draft doesn’t matter because:

THEY DON’T DEVELOP YOUNG PLAYERS

Does anyone know what Moses Moody’s role is with this team? Does he? Last year he spent time watching Ty Jerome and Anthony Lamb get more time than he did. Now Lamb and Jerome are gone and Moody, who is still here, gets inconsistent playing time and appears to be unsure of what he’s supposed to be doing.

JORDAN POOLE

Let’s admit right off the bat that he was a pain in the butt with the Warriors. The wild shots, the obvious pratfalls and the lack of control.

But the Warriors, admirably, took a firm hand with him, at least at first. They shipped him to the G League, told him to get his act together.

And he did. For the 2021-22 season he was a 20-point per game scorer and came up big in the playoffs, including 17 per game in the Finals. He even led the league in free throw percentage.

But he remained irritating. Green finally had enough and sucker punched Poole, which was captured on video.

Something had to be done. The options were: working out a peace treaty with Green and Poole or one of them had to go.

The Warriors picked option 2 and gave Poole away for Chris Paul’s expiring contract.

They’ll tell you now it was the right thing to do, but Poole is quietly playing pretty well in Washington. In fact, when the Warriors traded for Dennis Schroeder this year, it was interesting to compare stats at the time.

Schroeder: 18.4 pts, 45.2 %, 38.7 3 pt %, 6.6 assists, 1.1 steals.

Poole: 20.3 pts 43.5 %, 39.2 3 pts %, 5.1 assists, 1.7 steals.

They traded for a guy to do the things the guy they used to have did.

(DEEP BREATH. I’M GOING TO GO THERE)

STEVE KERR’S TILT-A-WHIRL SUBSTITUTIONS DON’T HELP

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Steve Kerr. He has not only been a consistent, winning, championship coach, he has conducted himself with grace and intelligence in public. He is a Bay Area treasure.

But the world got a look at Tinkerin’ Steve at the Olympic Games this year, and it almost got him banned in Boston.

Leading the USA Olympic team, Kerr steadfastly refused to cave in and consistently play Jayson Tatum, one of the stars of the NBA champion-winning Boston Celtics. Tatum didn’t even get on the floor in the opener and sat out the semi-final game too. (Both against Serbia.)

As Tatum said later, it turned into a big deal. The people of Boston were outraged and it became sports talk fodder. Kerr could have tossed Tatum in for a few minutes to quell the controversy, but that’s not how he rolls.

His abrupt lineup changes — former lacrosse player Pat Spencer is this year’s Ty Jerome — can be disconcerting.

Jrue Holiday, who was probably the top defender on that Olympic team, talked about that after the Olympics.

"We started off, we would play five minutes and then get subbed out,” he said on Podcast P. “Like, what are you gonna do in five minutes, bro? At that point, you're just getting warmed up,"

To be clear, Holiday said he was talking about the glut of talent on the team. But he didn’t come out of the game on his own. Kerr yanked the quick hook.

For the Warriors, the really confusing part comes when someone like Spencer or Gui Santos — current end-of-bench favs — get in and play well, we don’t see them again. Sometimes not for a game or two.

Kerr, I am sure, has this all worked out in his mind. He talks about “connection” and “ball movement.” But it just looks confusing. And the current result is a middle-of-the-pack, .500 team that has lost some truly dispiriting games.

They’re down to launching contested three pointers — 46 of 83 attempts Tuesday night — and an ever-changing lineup. The roster includes a lot of veterans who have put in their time in the NBA, often with more than one team.

The results are predictable. After the loss in Toronto, Mullen was discussing a critical Raptor rebound and putback.

“It’s a 50-50 ball,” he said. “But it is not a coincidence that the longer and quicker guy got the ball.”

Kerr’s admonition, it seems after every game, is to “keep plugging.”

And who knows? In the NBA, your next hot streak is always right around the corner. Maybe they run off eight in a row and my inbox is full of told-you-so’s.

But for now, it is the remains of that critical core, plugging away, with Steph Curry, battling ceaselessly against the tide.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. X and Threads @cwnevius