Coming into the season, it felt as though Will Richard, after a suprisingly impactful rookie campaign coming into the league as the 56th overall selection in the Draft, may have been actively being pushed out of the rotation.
Both Georges Niang and Brandon Williams, despite entering the season without fully guaranteed deals, were essentially guaranteed rotational roles. The Warriors needed Williams to act as a backup point guard and additional offensive battery when Stephen Curry was off the court, and Niang's versatility and perimeter shooting was sure to endear him to Steve Kerr as an option in the frontcourt.
Toss in Gary Payton II and De'Anthony Melton, and Richard was looking like the 11th man in this rotation. Unless he was able to hit his 3-point shots more consistently or provide more intense perimeter defense than he did last season, his minutes could be drastically decreased in 2026-27.
But Richard has started each of the past two games for Golden State with Gui Santos dealing with a knee issue, and his continued acclimation to the demands of the Warriors' offensive scheme may very well leave him with a path to minutes even when the rotation becomes whole again.
Will Richard is rapidly developing as a peripheral offensive contributor for the Warriors
Richard was a surprising development for the Warriors last season—most teams don't get immediate value out of the 56th overall pick, let alone use him as a semi-viable starter for stretches of the season.
But the deficits in Richard's game were hard to ignore by the end of the campaign. Across 69 games, he averaged just 6.4 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 1.3 assists while knocking down just 33.5% of his attempts from beyond the arc. Even toward the end of the season, when the rotation was entirely depleted, he seemed hesitant at times to get his shots up from the perimeter, and he largely remained inactive on the offensive end of the court.
His numbers in 2026-27, on the whole, are actually worse than his rookie-season production—in large part because of the reduced minutes share he saw in three of the team's first six games. But his performance against Miami, in which he posted 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting from the field, was proof of what he can still provide to this rotation.
Kerr scripted the very first play of the game to be a backdoor cut to Richard in order to get him going, and although it wasn't an explosive offensive performance from the sophomore, he didn't stop there. He missed a jump shot after that, but he followed that up with a pair of makes before the end of the first quarter, tacking on another made 3-pointer before the end of the first half.
Now, Richard didn't score a singular point in the second half, but he didn't need to. Simply continuing to learn to play in the flow of the game and work off of the gravity and ball movement provided by Curry and Draymond Green was enough, especially considering the fact that he was limited to just six minutes in the second half as the bench unit carried the game away for Golden State.
Those sorts of backdoor cuts and continued movement on offense, compared with steadily improving agility and composure on the defensive end of the court, are what will turn Richard into a consistently viable player for the Warriors. And if Kerr can get those things out of him on a night-to-night basis, don't count Richard out from carving out a rotational role over the remainder of this season.
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