Golden State Warriors have their 2015 roster back but it won’t be enough
The Golden State Warriors, by adding Andrew Wiggins this past season, recreated their 2014-2015 roster, but they’ll need more this time around.
The start of the Warriors dynasty is widely regarded as the 2014-2015 season. It was their first, of five straight, trips to the NBA Finals. They took on a crippled Cleveland Cavaliers roster with up-and-coming superstar Stephen Curry leading the way.
Klay Thompson and Draymond Green also were huge in that series. The Warriors had Marreese Speights and Harrison Barnes averaging over ten points per game on their roster. Andre Iguodala was also a major factor as well.
They replaced Barnes with Wiggins this upcoming season, with Wiggins potentially being a better fit. They also have replaced much of their experience with young talented second-year players like Eric Paschall and Jordan Poole.
However, Marquese Chriss, Wiggins, Poole and Paschall won’t be able to replace what Iguodala, Speights, Barnes, and Leandro Barbosa brought to the team. The Warriors will get a bit more help with their No. 2 overall pick, but they’ll need more than just a Wiseman-like addition.
The Warriors need another star, and although they’ve proven they can without one as they showed back in 2015 and even late in the 2019 playoffs, the team is battling in a conference much more aggressive than before.
The Lakers and Clippers will both likely be able to improve this offseason. In 2015, the Warriors played the injured Pelicans, the old Grizzlies, the single-star Rockets and then the injured Cavaliers.
They deserved the title just as the 2019 Raptors did, but the differences between the high-level teams and the low-level teams were quite a bit less. This time, it’s far wider, and the Warriors must improve their roster to contend with the conference’s improvements as well.
What improving means could be trading that No. 2 pick and another asset to bring in a Joel Embiid or Kelly Oubre Jr. type player. A counterpoint is that Curry and Thompson aren’t the players they were back in 2015. They’re arguably far better and more experienced.
Nonetheless, the Warriors will need more. The Lakers and Clippers both have two top-15 players, and the Warriors have one coming off an ACL tear and another (Draymond Green) that’s been trending downward the last few seasons.
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Golden State is great, but they’ll need to be legendary to down the LeBron James-led Lakers from repeating. They know LeBron well, and they should know that they’ll need more to win the 2021 NBA Championship.