RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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One of my all-time favorite movies is "Tremors." Kevin Bacon. Fred Ward. It's an absolute beauty of a film, and as a world-class procrastinator myself, one line from it has always especially cracked me up.
"We plan ahead. That way, we don't do anything right now."
That's the Golden State Warriors . For going on eight years now, basically since Kevin Durant left in the summer of 2019, they have been planning ahead for a time they believed was right around the corner, but it still has not arrived.
That time would be the post-Stephen Curry era. They started planning for it with the drafting of James Wiseman and Jonathan Kuminga , and even though both those picks turned out disastrous on myriad levels, here they are still planning ahead by doing absolutely nothing right now.
That's not a line. That's a fact. The Warriors are literally the only team in the NBA that has yet to add a single player via trade or free agency to its roster this offseason.
The only moves the Warriors, a team that finished eight games below .500 and missed the playoffs last year, have made this summer are re-signing their own guys. Kristaps Porziņģis got $40 million for two years. Al Horford , who's 40 years old and barely managed to play in half of last season's games, got $14 million.
On Monday, it was reported that Draymond Green will be returning on a one-year, $27.7 million deal , which is the same amount he would have made had he opted into his 2026-27 contract rather than opting out to provide the Warriors with the financial flexibility to try to sign LeBron James .
When that didn't happen, Green came back for his money. And the Warriors were happy to give it to him -- not just because he's a franchise legend and still quite a valuable player, but because, if we're being honest, all signs indicate the Warriors are already counting next season as a wash. It's next summer they're worried about, when they are slated to have more cap space than any other team in the league with just $50 million currently scheduled on their books.
In other words, more planning ahead. Which is smart. People, businesses, governments and certainly sports teams; everyone has to plan for the future. That's why we pay Social Security, put money away in a 401(k), and try to eat healthy and exercise. Our older selves will be grateful for the foresight.
The key is to not become so savings-obsessed that you forget to live right now, because right now is what's real. Curry is what's real. All this time, the Warriors thought they were smarter than everyone else when, in fact, they just had Curry.
And the fact is, they are willingly, even actively, marginalizing the last prime years of his career when they should be doing everything they can, at least within reason, to maximize them.
Does team owner Joe Lacob have any idea how indebted he is to Curry? When he bought the Warriors in 2010, the team was valued at $450 million. It's now worth $11 billion. That is almost entirely thanks to Curry, who, by the way, is still a top-10 player in the league even at 38. These aren't the last Kobe Bryant years in L.A. The Warriors keep thinking they need a home run when all they've needed is a few solid singles over the years to keep giving Curry a shot.
Because a shot is all he needs. Nobody thought trading for Andrew Wiggins was going to turn the Warriors into a championship team in 2022, but it did. That was good business. The Warriors smartly turned Durant's departure into a sign-and-trade for D'Angelo Russell , who they then parlayed into Wiggins.
That's actual planning. Sitting back waiting for Giannis Antetokounmpo or LeBron James to come to you on a minimum deal isn't planning. It's hoping. And that's what the Warriors have been banking on all this time. The hope that one of these home-run deals that required no real risk would just fall into their laps.
And why not? Everything else has. If you think about it, the Warriors have never had to take a real risk other than dumping Mark Jackson for Steve Kerr in 2014, which was an absolute no-brainer but did take some real stones, to compete for and win multiple championships.
They were gifted Curry when the Timberwolves passed on him twice in the 2009 draft. Two years later, they drafted Klay Thompson . The year after that, it was Draymond Green. They got Durant in 2016 thanks to a once-in-a-lifetime cap spike that will never happen again.
All of this afforded them the luxury of not having to mortgage future assets to maintain a championship roster. Over the last 13 years, the Warriors have traded four future first-round picks. One for Andre Iguodala in 2013, one to dump Iguodala's deal and to facilitate the aforementioned Durant sign-and-trade in 2019, one to bring in Chris Paul while also getting off Jordan Poole 's contract in 2023, and one for Jimmy Butler in 2025.
Four traded picks over 13 years. For four championships and six Finals appearances. That's not reality. The Knicks traded more picks than that for Mikal Bridges alone. That's reality. You have to spend to win, and not money alone. The Warriors have spent money. Plenty of it. It's the draft picks they have refused to part with.
It's no secret that Lacob views himself as the main author of the Warriors dynasty and wants to prove he can write an equally successful sequel in the post-Curry years. That's not the only reason the Warriors have been paralyzed by their own risk analysis, but it's surely a part of it.
Lacob seems to believe he's just going to find his next franchise player in some future draft when those players hardly exist in the first place. And even when they do, the Warriors have provided no recent evidence that they can identify who they are.
Of course, everyone knows the draft is a crapshoot even when experienced basketball minds and not out-of-their-depth owners are making the calls. Which is to say, it's not so much that the Warriors whiffed on these draft picks (a lot of other teams did, too), it's t...
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