What can the Golden State Warriors learn from missing and watching this postseason that they didn’t already know in their bones from nine previous trips and four championship runs in the Stephen Curry era?
Probably not that much. If you want to make it to the NBA Finals the way Dallas and Boston just did, you always need a deep two-way roster, preferably with one of the best five or six players in the league leading it, you need supplementary playmakers and rim protectors, you need role players who can hit shots and defend the wings, and you need the tenacity to get through a tough quarter or tough game late in the series.
Yes, Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and Steve Kerr have lived and celebrated a procession of those kinds of moments since that first 2015 stampede. They have a proven style of play around Curry. They have an established culture. If they contend for another championship in the near future, it probably will look similar to their finals appearances in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022.
But either you’re improving every day or you’re getting worse, and the Warriors have very definitively gotten worse — and older and less dynamic — since they won Game 6 in Boston two Junes ago and partied in the same city that will host Game 1 of the finals on Thursday night. The Celtics and Mavericks are the teams of the moment. No playoff journey is ever exactly the same, but the most successful ones update the winning model in a way that every other team in the league can note. Especially a team that’s been down this road many times already.
Let’s start this with the most specific point …
Can Jonathan Kuminga turn into some version of Jaylen Brown?
It’s hard to believe that this is Brown’s eighth pro season and he’s about to start his 22nd playoff series. He’s still only 27 and he’s already played 119 postseason games, which is 12th among players who were on an NBA roster this season. Every single player above him on this list is at least 32.
Brown has been an important player for a long time, in other words. He won the MVP of the Eastern Conference finals victory over Indiana with a 29.8 scoring average, 51.7 percent shooting, that game-saving 3-pointer in Game 1 and great defense, but again, it shouldn’t have been too shocking. Brown is a really good player. He was Boston’s most dangerous threat to the Warriors in the 2022 finals, for instance. He’s even better now.
But this was not a quick journey. Brown was a good defensive player and explosive presence pretty much from the outset in Boston, but he had dribbling, decision-making and consistency issues for much of the early part of his career, when he was plopped onto a playoff-ready roster that soon added Jayson Tatum, which only ramped up the expectations. Brown had an obvious pathway to stardom, but it wasn’t always clear whether he was going to take it.
Hmm, does that remind you of anybody? When I watch Brown these days and try to think of a younger player who could turn into a similar kind of 1B top-line performer — somebody who can guard just about anybody and take a lesser offensive role to complement a superstar but also have dynamic takeover periods on his own — how can I not think of Kuminga?
Brown is listed at 6-foot-6, 220 pounds and was the third pick out of Cal in 2016.
Kuminga is listed at 6-7, 225 pounds and was the seventh pick from the G League in 2021.
Yep, this is getting more and more interesting. So let’s take a look at both players’ third-season statistical lines; that’s Brown in 2018-19 when he was 22 and Kuminga this season at 21.
• In 2018-19, Brown started 25 of the 74 regular-season games he played, averaged 25.9 minutes, 13.0 points, 4.2 rebounds, 1.4 assists and shot 46.5 percent overall, 34.4 percent from 3-point distance. He had a 13.6 PER and produced 2.9 win shares.
• In 2023-24, Kuminga started 46 of 74 regular-season games he played, averaged 26.3 minutes, 16.1 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists, and shot 52.9 percent overall, 32.1 percent from 3-point distance. He had a 17.0 PER and produced 4.6 win shares.
Obviously, there’s no guarantee that Kuminga will take anything close to the same fourth-year jump that happened for Brown, when he zoomed to 33.9 minutes, 20.3 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.1 assists per game and shot 48.1 percent overall and 38.2 percent from 3-point distance. Then the following season, his fifth in the NBA, made his first All-Star team.
But again, I can’t think of too many other 21-to-23-year-olds who might be able to do this. Just among wings, I’ll put Franz Wagner, Scottie Barnes, Trey Murphy III, Jaden McDaniels, Jalen Green, Christian Braun, Keegan Murray, Shaedon Sharpe, Amen and Ausar Thompson, Bilal Coulibaly and Jaime Jaquez into the category with Kuminga — some placed here much more generously than others. Still, that’s a pretty short list, and there’s no way half of these 12 players will ever be as good as Brown is now. (Anthony Edwards, Paolo Banchero and Jalen Williams are 23-or-under young wings already at that level or above.)
So if I’m the Warriors, I’m very, very reluctant to even think of trading Kuminga. Two-way wings are gold in the NBA. Even 1.5-way wings are very valuable. You just don’t find many players who have a few decent seasons under their belt and yet haven’t come close to touching their potential NBA ceiling. Kuminga might never get there. He can be frustrating to watch. It’s frustrating for him, too, because he wants to play 35 minutes a game right now. But the frustration isn’t because Kuminga can’t become just as valuable as Brown is right now. It’s because, among about only 10 or 11 other guys in the league, he still can.
And if Kuminga doesn’t ever quite get there, he can still be a better version of P.J. Washington right now.
After his third season, Jonathan Kuminga is on an intriguing trajectory for the Warriors. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
You can build up the middle of your rotation with trades
You get superstars through the draft and almost only through the draft. That’s how Boston got Tatum and Brown and that’s how Dallas got Luka Dončić. (And how the Warriors got Curry.) You can get 1B guys via trade, the way Dallas got Kyrie Irving and Boston got Kristaps Porziņģis, but those acquisitions had a lot of layers.
Mainly, the Celtics and Mavericks have shown that you can load up on good role players by being aggressive and smart on the trade market — and by willing to give up a chunk of your future. You can also make mistakes, of course. But when you’ve already got a star or two at the top of your rotation, it’s wise to push in some chips to make sure they’re surrounded by dependable performers. It also tends to make the stars happier, too.
Dallas’ recent major trade acquisitions: Irving, Washington and Daniel Gafford. For players including Dorian Finney-Smith and Spencer Dinwiddie (to Brooklyn for Irving), Grant Williams and Seth Curry (to Charlotte for Washington) and Richaun Holmes (to Washington for Gafford).
Also, Dallas owes Washington its first-round pick this year (for Gafford), Charlotte its 2027 first-round pick (for Washington) and Brooklyn its 2029 first-round pick (for Irving).
Boston’s recent major trade acquisitions: Jrue Holiday, Porziņģis, Derrick White and Al Horford. For players including Malcolm Brogdon and Robert Williams (both to Portland for Holiday), Kemba Walker (to Oklahoma City for Horford), Romeo Langford and Josh Richardson (to San Antonio for White) and Marcus Smart, Danilo Gallinari and Mike Muscala (in the three-team Porziņģis trade, with Smart going to Memphis and the others going to Washington).
Also, the 2021 first-rounder Boston sent out for Horford turned out to be Alperen Şengün and Portland has the Warriors’ 2024 first-rounder (14th overall) via the Celtics from the Holiday trade, and Boston owes San Antonio its 2028 first-rounder (for White).
Does this mean that the Warriors should trade either their available 2026 or 2028 first-rounder or both to beef up the roster behind Curry this offseason? They’ve got to consider it, possibly packaged with Chris Paul’s $30 million contract for next season (if it’s guaranteed). I also believe other teams might be very interested in those picks, wagering that the Warriors could be due for a big decline late this decade. (Which, of course, is one big reason for the Warriors not to trade those picks. It’s all got to be balanced.)
The Warriors are their own proof of concept on the value of the trade market, by the way. They wouldn’t have won the 2022 title without the 2020 acquisition of Andrew Wiggins (and the pick that turned into Kuminga). Wiggins’ defense on a young Dončić was elemental to the Warriors’ five-game victory over Dallas in the 2022 Western Conference finals, which remains the last time Dallas lost a playoff series.
Another mini-lesson: You can bounce back from missing the playoffs the way Dallas, which tanked into the 11th spot last season, did it this season.
Stephen Curry and Draymond Green weren’t as efficient together this season. It’s clear the Warriors need more size to win in the West. (Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)
Yes, the Warriors need more size to compete against Minnesota, Dallas and Denver
OK, an obvious stipulation: I’ve recently devoted an entire column to fending off the idea that the Warriors were far too small to compete in the West. And I still don’t believe that just adding any famous old, slow 7-footer would salve all Play-In wounds. I think Curry is best playing a quick, read-and-react offensive system and if the center can’t read or react, that’s a big problem.
However, most of my argument was built on the previously unarguable point that Draymond Green remained their best crunch-time center and that his pairing with Curry in that lineup was the Warriors’ most essential element. Well, it used to be.
The Eyeball Test this season, though, was pretty clear. Even when Curry and Draymond were healthy and unsuspended enough to be on the court together, it just didn’t look quite the same. Some of that was because Klay Thompson, Wiggins and Kevon Looney struggled so much in the first half of the season, which dragged down the entire veteran group. But even in the second half of the season, when the Warriors started to play much better, the Curry-Draymond pairing put up a net rating (plus-7.4 after Feb. 4) below Curry-Kuminga (plus-8.4), Curry-Wiggins (plus-10.4), Brandin Podziemski–Moses Moody (plus-12.4) and Podziemski-Kuminga (plus-8.7).
This just isn’t the way it’s normally gone for the Warriors. And here are the numbers that show it. Curry and Draymond’s two-man net ratings in seasons when they played 750 minutes or more together:
2023-24: plus-4.8
2022-23: plus-8.6
2021-22: plus-14.6
2020-21: plus-6.9
2018-19: plus-15.2
2017-18: plus-12.5
2016-17: plus-17.7
2015-16: plus-19.3
2014-15: plus-17.7
If the Warriors can’t race past teams with their small lineup, the Warriors get smushed. And now the Western Conference playoffs is a forest of extremely talented big men — Dallas’ two-center combination of Gafford and Dereck Lively were absolutely necessary against Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns (and to impede Edwards’ sprints to the rim) and Minnesota’s big men were absolutely necessary against Nikola Jokić and Denver. And none of those teams are going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
You could see Steve Kerr reacting to this by playing Trayce Jackson-Davis more with Draymond late in the season, though TJD wasn’t up to speed in the Play-In game against Sacramento and had to be pulled. That can happen to any young center. It was Jackson-Davis’ first time through that kind of pressure cooker and he could be much better the next time. I imagine he will get many more shots at it.
But the Warriors need to be looking for another shot-blocker and rim-runner to be part of a backline tag team with TJD, because they can’t count on doing it exactly the same way they did it for a decade. They can still go small at times with Draymond next to Kuminga and Wiggins. But they could also deploy an active 7-footer behind Kuminga and Wiggins or line up Draymond with a pure shot-blocker behind him. They did it when Draymond was young with Andrew Bogut and then in Draymond’s prime with JaVale McGee. But at crunch time, it was always Draymond at center, drawing the opponent center into a pick-and-roll with Curry and letting all offensive mayhem break loose.
It almost always worked. It’s not working as much these days, and there’s not a lot of reason to believe it will work any better in 2024-25. It’s time for the Warriors to get a little more conventional and bigger at center, and if that cuts into Draymond’s minutes even more (down to 27.1 minutes per in 2023-24, his lowest since he became a starter his third season), well, that’s already happening, too.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of Jaylen Brown and Jonathan Kuminga: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
