That was not how the Golden State Warriors wanted to go out.
Even with the wildly inconsistent season, with the terrible road record, with the Splash Brothers always playing terribly in Staples Center (err, Crypto.com Arena), the Warriors had belief in themselves. The quartet of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Steve Kerr had never lost a Western Conference playoff series. Surely they could summon the magic once more?
In the end, the stars didn’t play well enough, and the help wasn’t there from the rest of the roster, as the Warriors lost in six games to the Los Angeles Lakers. Moses Moody found himself thrust into the rotation, but Jordan Poole was abysmal all series long and saw his role marginalized, while Jonathan Kuminga couldn’t get off the bench.
The Lakers mortgaged the future to make them more competitive in the present, trading a future first-round pick to add veterans who played key roles in this series. The Warriors have been extremely reluctant to give up on their idea of a future, holding on to Joa Lacob’s “Two Timelines” vision.
The Golden State Warriors have to make decisions about their future.
Golden State is now at a crossroads. Do they want to try and win another title with this championship core? If so, they may need to move their young players and draft picks to make an upgrade. Jordan Poole, he of the up-and-down offense, terrible defense, and often baffling decision-making, seems like an obvious candidate.
The Warriors traded James Wiseman at the Trade Deadline for Gary Payton II, a win-now move that was crucial in the Warriors getting even this far. Jordan Poole making $27.4 million next season in the first year of his contract extension offers an opportunity: they can use him as matching salary to go big-game hunting. He isn’t as bad as he looked in the playoffs, and teams will still find a lot of value in a young player who averaged 20.4 points per game this season and can create and shoot as well as Poole can.
If the Warriors do look around at the league and start offering large packages of picks and young players for an All-Star type of player, are there any realistic targets on the market? Let’s look at four players who could genuinely help the Warriors and may possibly be available for the right price.
One final caveat: we don’t know for sure when new rules in the CBA will kick in, so many of these trades may become more difficult or impossible if the harshest penalties for teams deep into the luxury tax are in place as early as this offseason. That looms as another important storyline for the Warriors this summer.
We start in the Windy City with a player who represents what Jordan Poole could have been.