The Golden State Warriors are starting the youth movement that will propel them into the future, and you can bet that core will remember this struggle.
One of the most talented teams in the NBA, the Golden State Warriors struggled to stay even remotely in the playoff race with Stephen Curry‘s suffering an injury in the fourth game of the season that sidelined him for months.
Klay Thompson was already out for potentially the entire regular season. Even D’Angelo Russell and Draymond Green missed weeks at a time. Those four former All-Stars missing time has killed any playoff aspirations this team had.
That’s caused the young Warriors, players like Jordan Poole, Eric Paschall, Marquese Chriss and Ky Bowman to step up. Now, that core can add the 24-year-old Andrew Wiggins to that group.
Well, if one thing is for sure, it’s that this combination of young contributors will not forget the struggle that this season has been when they sit at the top of the Western Conference next season.
After all, it’s the first true NBA experience for players like Poole and Paschall. They’ll have this 12-43 start engrained in how they train and prepare in the next few years as they’ll be key contributors to a championship-caliber roster.
Not that it made him an NBA superstar, but Stephen Curry lived through a similar struggle. A lottery pick, he joined a Warriors’ team that wasn’t overly successful and completely changed the organization’s culture.
In his first season in the league, the Warriors had losing streaks that extended six, seven and nine games. For a potential star, that’s tough, but with a player like Curry or similarly Poole, it takes time to really feel out the pace, speed, and strength of NBA players compared to collegiate ones.
Curry made this roster one that opponents fear, and now it’s time for this young core to remember this struggle and continue his legacy well into the 2020s.