For the Golden State Warriors, the start of this season couldn't have gone any better.
The rotation, outside of Brandon Williams and Will Richard, is largely healthy. Excluding the Kristaps Porzingis situation, virtually all of their offseason signings have gone according to plan. And they've won eight games in a row to boot, with a chance to extend it to nine agains the Houston Rockets on Wednesday night.
This was always going to be a team that was going to need to make use of the entirety of its rotation, including its two-way players, by pure virture of the injury concerns that face the roster. But to this point in the season, Golden State hasn't had to turn to those pieces outside of their (surprisingly frequent) blowouts of opposing teams.
LJ Cryer has played a total of just 50 minutes on the season. Malevy Leons has played 30. Graham Ike leads the pack with 80, which makes sense due to his role as a big man in the Warriors' rotation.
But with Richard's health in question—he's reportedly trying to play through a torn UCL in his thumb—and Williams down at least for the next week with a hamstring strain, there's a chance the Warriors turn to Cryer and Leons more extensively.
Cryer is likely safe due to the Warriors' constant need for additional perimeter shooting. But Leons has done very little to prove he's worth of any sort of minutes at the NBA level. Whenever his next chance comes, the Warriors need to seriously be weighing whether it's worth swapping him out for an available two-way player.
Malevy Leons should be on thin ice with the Warriors—especially if injuries necessitate an opportunity for him
Now, it looks like the Warriors might not need Leons extensively at this point in the season, especially if Richard and Williams rebound rather quickly from their injuries. But there will come a time where they do need to dip that deep into the rotation, whether it's an extended absence for one of their veterans or simply a closely-combined series of rest days for Stephen Curry and Draymond Green.
For most teams, the two-way contract spots can be used as developmental luxuries. It largely seems like it's turned out that way for the Warriors this season as well.
But Leons has shown little to no improvement during his time with Golden State, let alone anything to show he can be a consistent rotational player if needed. Even if we disregard his statistics from last season as he dealt with a wrist injury, he still has shown very little consistent feel for what the Warriors are attempting to accomplish on the offensive end of the court, and his interior shooting touch is virtually non-existent.
Across six preseason appearances with the Warriors, Leons averaged just 3.3 points, 1.5 rebounds, and 0.7 assists on a relatively healthy diet of 11 minutes per game. He shot just 28% from the field in that span, coming in well below his Summer League mark of 56.1%.
This isn't necessarily an urgent matter for the Warrior, as argued above. But if Leons gets any sort of extended rotational opportunity over the coming weeks, and the result looks much the same, Golden State should be seriously monitoring the market for an alternative.
We saw the Los Angeles Lakers make a two-way contract swap this week, adding Carson Cooper to one of their three spots while dropping Lawson Lovering. Cooper became a free agent after being dropped by the Memphis Grizzlies in exchange for Richie Saunders. In short, this happens frequently across the NBA.
Alex Toohey—whom the Warriors grabbed in the second round of the 2025 NBA Draft and has looked excellent at the G-League level this season—is certainly an internal option there.
No matter how the team looks through this early portion of the season, every opportunity to optimize this roster and this rotation needs to be taken seriously. And if Leons can't provide value in his next rotational 'tryout', there needs to be some serious stock put into that outcome.
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