For those who watched the Golden State Warriors during their preseason slate, a simple question may easily have popped up—how was this team able to land Brandon Williams on a non-guaranteed deal?
After all, he was one of the brightest spots for Golden State during the preseason, and he looks, at the very least, like a real solution to the Warriors' backup point guard problem behind Stephen Curry. He's consistently been one of the most active and speediest players on the floor for the Warriors, and he easily secured his roster spot from essentially the outset of the slate.
So why were the Warriors seemingly the only team willing to grant him an opportunity this season?
The answer there is complex, but it comes down to the steady decline of Williams' archetype across the NBA. Smaller guards who aren't primary scorers or highly prolific ball handlers are going out of fashion, and Williams is neither. Nor is he a true threat from beyond the arc, having knocked down just 28% of his shots from that range over the course of his four-year NBA career.
As Williams enters a pivotal campaign with Golden State, then, he needs more than just an opportunity to show what he's capable of. He got that last season with the Dallas Mavericks, and he largely succeeded. Williams needs to prove that he's capable of adding more to his game if he wants an enhanced NBA lifeline beyond this season, whether that's with the Warriors or another organization.
Brandon Williams is fighting for his next NBA opportunity this season with Golden State
This isn't to say that Williams won't be back with Golden State after this season. If he cements himself as a viable backup point guard behind Curry, there's very few reasons Golden State wouldn't try to bring him back on a cheap deal unless they're able to land a major backcourt piece through a trade or free agency.
But the fact of the matter is that another season as simply an energetic bench guard won't be enough to secure Williams' NBA future.
The 3-point shooting is obviously the greatest concern here. Williams is more than capable of working his way downhill against slower defenders and finishing when he has a relatively clear path to the rim, but his inconsistent shooting from beyond the arc will always limit his viability in certain looks and rotations—including with Golden State.
More than that, though, Williams needs to develop into a more reliable playmaker this season with ample on-ball opportunities in Golden State. He did post a respectable 2.05 assist-to-turnover ratio last season in Dallas, but some of the issues that plagued him earlier in his career began to crop up again in the Warriors' preseason.
Across five games with Golden State, he's posted just 11 assists to 15 turnovers. Given Steve Kerr's emphasis on mistake-free basketball heading into this season, that's a trend that could quickly limit his minutes on a night-to-night basis if it continues.
Williams, of course, has a chance to make a major impact for Golden State this season. The Warriors haven't had a playmaking option to truly ease the workload on Curry over the past couple of seasons, and if Williams can identify himself as one, he'll get plenty of run over the course of the campaign. But in the aggregate, it's hard to imagine him surpassing the 22.2 minutes he averaged last season in Dallas by any significant amount.
What Williams needs are more effective minutes if he wants to improve his standing on the open market beyond this season. The Warriors, at the very least, will give him the chance to accomplish that in 2026-27.
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