Early trends show Warriors got luckier than expected over summer

Rookie center Quinten Post has yet to make his debut for the Golden State Warriors, having been the franchise's only selection at 52nd overall in the 2024 NBA Draft.

After trading their selection to the Memphis Grizzlies as part of an Andre Iguodala salary dump in 2019, the Warriors were without a first-round pick for the first time since 2017. As it turns out, this may have been the perfect year to be absent from the first night of draft proceedings.

The Warriors were lucky to have missed the first-round of the 2024 Draft

It may only be a week into the new NBA season, but it's fair to say that the 2024 Draft class is yet to make too much of an impression. In fact, in a piece for Yahoo Sports on Wednesday, writer Tom Haberstroh made the argument that the 2024 class is off to the worst start in league history.

"The way it’s going, we might be witnessing the worst class to enter the NBA in league history", Haberstroh wrote. "Rookies have been glued to the bench in ways that we haven’t seen. And even when the rooks do play, the team barely trusts them for any sort of real responsibility."

It's hard to envisage that Golden State were too certain on the prospects of the 2024 class when they made that trade more than five years ago, so it's really more luck than foresight that it resulted in this manner.

The Warriors actually had the chance to retain their pick had it landed in the top three, but it ultimately fell predictably at 14th when the draft lottery took place. At that time the selection was in the hands of the Portland Trail Blazers, yet it exchanged hands once more when they acquired Deni Avdija from the Washington Wizards.

The Wizards selected Carlton 'Bub' Carrington with the 14th pick. The 6'4" guard is one player who is seeing reasonable opportunity, having averaged 8.7 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists in 24 minutes per game while shooting 36.8% from the floor and 50% from three-point range.

Given Steve Kerr's history of not overly trusting young players (at least prior to Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis), it would have been difficult to see one of these first-round rookies making much impact with Golden State had they had a selection in June.

That's not to say that star players from this class may not emerge in time, but the early signs do suggest that the Warriors got out of the first-round of a draft at the perfect time.