The Golden State Warriors have spent the Jimmy Butler era flirting with the glory they knew under Bob Myers. Four years removed from the team's most recent championship, however, a harsh reality is setting in: A fifth title with Stephen Curry leading the charge is further away than it seems.
Flashes of brilliance with Butler, Curry, and Draymond Green may have suggested otherwise, but the Warriors were never a single trade away from being truly elite.
Golden State has a surplus of talent on paper with the likes of Butler, Curry, Green, Buddy Hield, Al Horford, Jonathan Kuminga, De'Anthony Melton, Moses Moody, Brandin Podziemski, Quinten Post, and Will Richard. As such, many have hypothesized that the Warriors were the right trade away from making a serious leap.
It certainly helps the argument that the Warriors lost in the second round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs and could've gone further had Curry not suffered an ill-timed hamstring injury.
Fast forward to 2025-26 and the general consensus has been that the Warriors could bridge the gap between pretender and contender by completing a highly anticipated Kuminga trade. He is, after all, a talented 23-year-old scorer with mountains of untapped potential.
Even before Butler suffered a season-ending torn ACL, however, an unfortunate truth lingered: The Warriors were always going to need more than the Kuminga trade to emerge from the West.
Warriors have a questionable roster structure, Jimmy Butler or not
For as talented as the roster may be, the Warriors were far from a perfect team before Butler went down. They're No. 21 in fast break points allowed, No. 27 in points allowed via turnovers, and No. 29 in points via drives.
Those are all correctable issues, of course, but the biggest hurdle isn't adding new talent—it's finally embracing the players who are already on the roster.
Golden State committed to players such as Kuminga, Moody, and Podziemski as an attempt to bridge the gap between the future and the present. Kuminga and Moody are now in their fifth NBA seasons, however, and the delays in their respective development are at least partly attributable to the coaching staff.
The Warriors' refusal to allow young players to work through their mistakes and develop an identity outside of supplementing the stars has inevitably created holes they could've filled.
Kuminga has proven more than capable of defending in isolation and attacking the basket, but even high-level production hasn't saved his place in the rotation. Moody and Podziemski offer spacing, yet their cold spells typically lead to brief but drastic cuts in playing time or touches.
Even Post has experienced a similar fate with his minutes being cut from 21.8 per game in December to 17.5 in January despite his slash line jumping from .398/.366/.833 to .494/.385/.750.
It's the unfortunate truth that no trade, Kuminga or otherwise, can fix: Golden State needs its young players to step up, but won't empower them to play through the ups and downs of a season. An environment has thus been created where errors aren't tolerated and the room for growth is thus diminished to the point of bordering on nonexistent.
Even if a significant trade could've been executed with a healthy Butler in the rotation, the Warriors weren't going to realize their potential until they allowed the up-and-comers to find their place.