Looking ahead to the 2025-26 regular season, Golden State Warriors fans have reasons to have high hopes for the team's performance, and one of the benchmarks of the regular season, the NBA Cup, is reason enough to generate excitement.
However, with the announcement of the drawing for group play in next season's NBA Cup, the Warriors must again face a series of nightmare matchups that could mean an early exit for the team in the mid-season tournament.
With the NBA Cup coming to serve as a highly anticipated event and a (somewhat unreliable) benchmark of performance for teams during the regular season, Golden State has a tough path ahead of them to achieve any sort of success in the tournament next season.
The Warriors' NBA Cup group will be even tougher than last year
With the groups for the NBA Cup being drawn prior to the beginning of Summer League, it has been announced that the Warriors will be a part of West Group C, which will include Golden State, the Denver Nuggets, the Houston Rockets, the Portland Trailblazers and the San Antonio Spurs.
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In a group stacked with stars, including Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama and Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and his teammates already have a definite uphill battle lined up for them.
Over the course of almost a month, Golden State will need to play each of these teams once to determine who will be eligible to move on to the knockout rounds, not only making their path to the NBA Cup more volatile but also guaranteeing a series of difficult games near the start of the regular season.
The Warriors' history with the Rockets in the postseason is well-documented, but their defeat in the NBA Cup quarter-finals last season, in a defensive slugfest that Houston won 91-90, signaled the start of a downward spiral that Golden State only managed to climb out of through the arrival of Jimmy Butler.
Moreover, last season, the Warriors lost their final game of the group stage to the Nuggets, 119-115, as Jokic scored 38 points and Golden State's offense struggled to maintain any momentum.
Apart from the NBA Cup, the Warriors lost a pivotal matchup to the Spurs in one of their last games of the season (on a Harrison Barnes buzzer-beater, no less) that ultimately cost them a bona-fide playoff berth.
While the Western Conference is already incredibly loaded, teams around the Warriors have made numerous moves this offseason, and it looks like the NBA Cup will renew some of these rivalries in a transformed fashion.