Golden State Warriors will be title favorites next year
Enjoy it while it lasts – the Golden State Warriors dynasty will be back on next season
Obviously, this has not been the kind of season the Golden State Warriors envisioned, but maybe this season was a blessing in disguise.
With Klay Thompson tearing his ACL and Kevin Durant‘s departure to the Brooklyn Nets, the Warriors season already felt bleak. It would have taken MVP-level Stephen Curry to keep this team above water. The offseason addition D’Angelo Russell was a big signing to add some fire power next to Curry.
On October 30th, the Warriors got the final nail in their coffin with Curry fracturing his hand against the Phoenix. From there we saw nagging injuries take Russell and Draymond Green in-and-out of the lineup.
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All these injuries and unfortunate events are what the Warriors needed to retool and be back in the championship hunt again next season. We have seen this story before with the San Antonio Spurs.
Back in the early 90’s, the Spurs were playoff contenders every year with David Robinson. Then in the 1996-97 season, he missed all but six games due to injury. This Spurs ending up winning only 20 games because of it, but they got the last laugh in the end.
All the losing resulted in the first overall pick and I think we all know who the Spurs took *whispers Tim Duncan*. The rest is history. The Spurs were able to become NBA royalty and a perennial title-contenders because of bad luck converting into a blessing.
The same can happen for the Golden State Warriors. They currently have a nice lead for worst record in the NBA which will surely land them a top-3 pick. My guess is they target LaMelo Ball to be the third “Splash Bros.”
Yeah, his dad is bit of a nuisance, but LaMelo is a fantastic scorer and can shoot from anywhere. He has length, size, athleticism, and is an underrated passer. I think he would be a perfect fit at small forward with the Warriors.
With LaMelo Ball on the roster, you take your other first-round pick you got from the Minnesota Timberwolves, one of your own first-round picks, plus Andrew Wiggins and you see what the market is.
Maybe the Philadelphia 76ers are tired of trusting the process and ready to blow it up by moving Ben Simmons. Even someone like Gordon Hayward or Kevin Love could be great additions to the roster.
The Warriors have their backs against the salary cap wall, so they can’t improve their team through free agency. It’s all about drafting the guys that fit the culture and trading for positive pieces to the team. Their depth around their star players have been lacking in recent years, but now they have the draft picks and an asset in Wiggins to change those things.
In one offseason, the Warriors could re-tool their roster around the original “Big 3” of Klay, Steph, and Draymond, and be right back in the mix again next season.
Even if they choose to not dive deep in the trade-market, they will still have 25-year-old Andrew Wiggins, a top-3 pick this year, and a potential top-5 pick next year via Timberwolves. So, they could start prepping this second wave of potential young stars to take the torch from the original “Big 3.”
The Warriors have an infrastructure and a plan in place to continue this dynasty as the current Warrior stars start to fade as they get older. A seamless transition from one regime to the next could happen. If I’m the rest of the league, that notion terrifies me.
When the Warriors said they were “light-years ahead” of the rest of the NBA, maybe this is what they meant. Of course, they didn’t plan for all their critical pieces to get hurt or be in-and-out of the lineup, but they could have been more ready for life after KD then we could have anticipated.
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The D’Angelo Russell trade was the first domino they needed to fall to put their plan in motion. So far, I like the direction the Warriors are going. I believe they will be title favorites, once again, next season.