The Warriors Have Some Self-Reflecting to do

It didn’t take a 26-point loss to the Los Angeles Clippers to show that these Golden State Warriors are far from contending for another championship. But a night that saw a visibly frustrated Stephen Curry implore his teammates for more as James Wiseman watched from the sidelines due to a disciplinary benching revealed a larger, more sobering truth: the Warriors -- as an organization -- are scattered, stuck in a vicious cycle of self-sabotage with no identity or focus to regain their status as one of the league’s best.

The Warriors are hitting the gas and pumping the brakes at the same time. They’re going through an intense workout and eating Krispy Kreme donut holes in between sets. Perhaps even worse, they’re like a former star high school quarterback trying to re-live the glory days and ride the momentum of being a local hero long past the moment’s expiration date instead of trying to move on and start a new chapter.

The Warriors have been, largely, stagnant for most of the season. Torn between trying to play high-level basketball with two-thirds of a Hall of Fame trio and laying the groundwork to stay relevant for a post-Curry future. Put into practice, it’s clear they aren’t having much success with either and it’s time to come up with a better plan.

Once the golden standard for creativity, Golden State has become predictable. They changed the fabric of basketball with their innovation, but, lately, they’ve spent their energy and resources trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

It’s important, of course, to acknowledge some of the unexpected and unavoidable obstacles placed in front of the organization.

A half-decade of unparalleled dominance has consequences. Five deep postseason runs -- and a bout with COVID-19 -- have taken a toll on Draymond Green’s body, limiting the amount of time the Warriors can utilize him in his best position. And, of course, few teams are equipped to withstand losing a player like Klay Thompson for a week, let alone two entire seasons after suffering pair of devastating career-altering lower-body injuries.

It’s also important to acknowledge the things that the Warriors deserve credit for.

Salvaging Kevin Durant’s departure by landing D’Angelo Russell and, eventually, flipping him for Andrew Wiggins was about as good as it was going to get. Acquiring Kelly Oubre Jr. after Thompson’s injury was a pleasant surprise and a positive sign that Joe Lacob and the front office want to remain competitive. Steve Kerr has created a strong defense that can bother star players with a variety of looks and length.

Despite the struggles that the Warriors have faced this year -- problems that came to a boiling point at the Clippers’ Staples Center which, coincidentally, was the same venue that hosted Green and Durant’s spat a few years ago -- it doesn’t feel like the organization has turned its back on the team, fans, and a championship pursuit.

Golden State wants the glory again, but they’re stuck between not chasing wins and misguided player development. Fans are calling for a greater sense of urgency and a clear-cut vision to make the most of Curry’s unrivaled greatness and commitment to the franchise.

Hours after news of Thompson’s injury sent shockwaves throughout the organization, Adam Silver announced that the Warriors would be selecting James Wiseman with the second overall pick in the 2020 Draft.

With the understanding that the loss of the star guard put the Larry O’Brien trophy out of reach, there was a sense that the 2020-21 season would be about developing Wiseman, Jordan Poole, and Eric Paschall and preparing them to be contributors on a good team. Twenty-eight games into his career and Wiseman -- having lost his starting spot on a team without size -- is playing just 20.6 minutes per contest and, recently, endured a three-quarter benching for missing a COVID test, a punishment that ended when Kerr inserted the 19-year-old into the lineup to run out the last 11 minutes of another blowout loss.

If one of the primary focuses of the season is going to be Wiseman’s growth -- a reasonable pivot post-Thompson injury -- then it only makes sense to let him play. Considering everything that Wiseman, a player who seems to be very critical of himself, has dealt with over the last year -- an abrupt end to his collegiate career, a lack of an NBA training camp, a COVID-19 infection, a wrist injury, rookie growing pains, and a fan base that likes to vocally bash the front office for selecting him -- perhaps benching the teenaged center isn’t the right approach.

And therein lies the Warriors’ biggest issue: the cookie-cutter philosophy that tries to bend players to fit the system and culture, rather than adjusting your system to the personnel.

Wiseman has rarely had the opportunity to show off his strengths with his limited playing time. He’s a raw player whose athleticism, shooting touch, and full court handle have a lot of people excited about his potential. However, he’s been struggling in a role that turns him into a different player than the one the Warriors want to entrust with the franchise.

Poole, another first-rounder the Warriors envision playing a role in the future, has experienced a similar journey. In Poole’s up-and-down two-year career, he’s looked his best with the ball in his hands, running pick-and-roll, finding the open man, and getting into a rhythm. Yet, in his inconsistent minutes, he’s been utilized differently.

Though it’s not easy to find production later in drafts or land quality free agents with a limited budget, but Golden State’s scouting, development, and talent evaluation has recently missed the mark on talent, especially homegrown players — all of which is, partly, an extension of the issues persisting in their overacting philosophy.

The Warriors need to give the promising talents the opportunity to be who they are, instead of losing them attempting to mold them into players they’re not. Moreover, they need to move more decisively with experiments that don’t work and quicker on ones that do.

It’s head-scratching how Damian Jones and Jacob Evans continued to hold roster spots for as long as they did — good for a steady dose of DNPs and garbage time minutes with no purpose or intention. Beyond draft misses, the Warriors’ overall reluctance to change has showed itself in other ways. Brad Wanamaker looks to have finally fallen out of the rotation, but it shouldn’t have taken 297 fourth-quarter minutes (fourth in the entire NBA at the All-Star break) to make a switch at the backup point guard spot. Meanwhile, the Warriors — a team desperately in need of high-IQ talent has been a little too patient with regards to acquiring and playing Juan Toscano-Anderson, a tough and savvy player cut from the same cloth as Green and Andre Iguodala.

And, of course, the biggest experiment of them all: Alen Smailagić. There are few things that ignite a fire under Warriors fans quite like the 6’10 Serbian’s name. The center has been in the organization since 2018 and has yet to show the kind of potential the front office that traded up for him believes he has. In essence, Smailagić might be two years away from being two years away and that’s just not a realistic timeline for most teams, let alone one like the Warriors.

Golden State has to come to terms with all of this and act accordingly by reassessing their values, principles, and methods because right now the approach feels, at times, backwards.

Poole’s most exciting moments have come as the ball handler, but not even a breakout performance with the Santa Cruz Warriors as the Dubs’ backup point guard situation reached new lows. The Warriors have always held long versatile playmakers in high regard, but they chose Wiseman over Ball, a guy who fits that description perfectly. Re-drafting Ball to the Bay Area is less interesting — and important — than trying to understand why the brass didn’t feel like he fit a system designed for a guy like him and chose a big man they, reportedly, viewed as less talented.

As they work through all of that, the Warriors also realize that they don’t necessarily need a lot around Curry and Green to make some noise. Despite the roster’s major limitations, they’re in the playoff hunt, fighting for a spot in the ever-competitive West. In summation, the team may not be chasing wins, but they look like they’re trying to rack up a lot of W’s behind the leadership of the veterans.

Signature wins over the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, and Utah Jazz have energized a team with a lot of fight in them. But the tape also shows cracks in the foundation of a Warriors’ offense that relies on the team’s best player to make something happen with no spacing and the ball in someone else’s hands.

It defies logic, but the Warriors have managed to trot out one of the league’s most abysmal offenses despite having its greatest offensive player and an all-time floor general next to him. Kerr has designed a gameplay that leverages Curry’s talents to get others going when the film shows that the opposite is more successful. Though he’s the greatest off-ball player ever as well, it’s imperative that they run things through him, rather than enduring stretches where Kevon Looney touches the ball more than he does.

The creativity and flow have been replaced with a predictability that turns to purposeless side-to-side passing around the perimeter between guys with shooting strokes that defenses don’t respect. After jumpstarting the small ball revolution and ushering a new era of distance shooting, the Warriors have remained steadfast in their more old-school approach to roster and rotation construction.

The good news for the Warriors is that Curry has proven that he’s still got it. He’s, arguably, at the peak of his powers, improving his defense and matching the numbers from his Unanimous MVP campaign with a fraction of the support he had then. And when the greatest player in your franchise history is leaving it all on the floor every single night despite little help, you owe it to him to go all-in.

But that means they have to be more creative than waiting on Curry, Thompson, and Green to replicate the magic of 2015. It means they can’t bank on Thompson to be the same player or for Green to find a fountain of youth in a few years. It means that, unless you have Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, you’re going to have more success tweaking those roles to fit Wiggins and Oubre. It means keeping up with the times and going small with skill.

Given their payroll problems and the overall landscape of the NBA, the Warriors have their work cut out for them. Building a winner isn’t supposed to be easy, but when you have the pieces and assets the Warriors do, it shouldn’t be this hard either.

Re-tooling and contending simultaneously isn’t impossible, but the Warriors will need to re-think how they’re trying to do each one. Golden State once prided itself on being “light years ahead,” but right now they’re falling behind, perhaps too optimistic that the previous formula can work again.

It’s time the Warriors looked themselves in the mirror and started asking themselves some important questions. About the timeline and their sense of urgency. About the goals of this season and the next. About their flexibility. About simplification, from letting Curry run pick-and-roll to valuing spacing in free agency.

Doing two opposite things is difficult and the Warriors aren’t making it any easier on themselves. They’ve been slow to react, a trend that could force them into missing out on the rest of Curry’s prime and valuable stages in Wiseman’s development.

On its worst nights, the flaws in the current system’s structural integrity lead to eye-opening nights like the one against the Clippers. However, the Warriors can pull hope from what it looks like on its best nights; players like Andrew Wiggins and Oubre Jr. getting to the rim, Green adding a couple of easy buckets off of easy 4-on-3 reads, Wiseman dazzling with his athleticism, and Curry’s greatness taking over.

The Warriors need to get the young guys ready for Thompson’s return. Playoff experience early on in a player’s career can really set them on a course to future success as it did for Curry, Thompson, and Green in 2013. It’s important for them to adjust their development strategy to prioritize growing a player’s strengths over mitigating their weaknesses.

And, above all else, they have to remember that a triumvirate of Curry, Thompson, and Green is rare and that’s why they have to do whatever it takes to give them a chance.

The Warriors aren’t going to hoist a trophy at the end of this shortened season, but they can make progress for next year. What that ultimately looks like depends on Curry, Kerr, Myers, and Lacob getting on the same page with a good plan, one that is direct and lays down the right foundation for a championship team.