Ahead of Summer, the Warriors Are In Need of Continuity
There’s a lot of moving parts that go into the creation of a championship team. Maybe most key amongst them is continuity - if you want to not just have repeat appearances, but to be a repeat winner, it’s maybe the most important facet of roster composition to keep in mind.
To say the Warriors might struggle with this next season is an understatement. Up and down the lineup, there are question marks on both health and age: Who’s going to regress so late into their career, who’s going to play and for how much time, do these guys even fit with the goal?
The answers aren’t clean ones. On Friday, returning head coach Steve Kerr had some direct words to share about how important this idea is. “We can’t do that again, it’s too hard to build continuity” Kerr said of the 6 players which had either minutes restrictions or were unable to play back-to-backs as a result of bodily management.
Coach Kerr isn’t the only person who’s aware of the problem.
“We’re obviously behind the eight-ball with no Moses and Jimmy early, so it’s more about starting the season with ‘we gotta get through a certain point of the year’. We have to hold it together here for a little bit” said GM Mike Dunleavy Jr. when asked about roster uncertainties during his press conference.
And this is only assuming the roster stays as-is. There’s a multitude of changes possibly on the horizon, with Kerr’s rehiring as a major indicator that Golden State is going big-game hunting in the 2026-2027 season. Depth defined the dynastic years of the late 2010s, but an overlooked component was the consistency. There’s a whole list of players who are anywhere from 1 to 3-time NBA champions because of the aforementioned continuity, the ability to play with each other enough to recognize habits, strengths, and weaknesses. This is maybe the X-factor that the Dubs are missing ahead of the season that has done so well for them in seasons past.
It’s hard to diagnose a problem that has no clear solution. In trading away some of the contracts taking up a lot of space on the books, there’s no guarantee that the Warriors will get a player of necessary caliber if they offload a certain number of players to other teams, or even that they’d get any value out of the trades. Deals like that would mean bigger names that have adjusted into the system would be on the way out, further damaging the composition of success; the Dubs would be banking almost entirely on players who can’t cut it on contenders given how the money will have to work, which isn’t exactly a recipe for success.
Whatever the case may be, Golden State is in dire need of in-season continuity. Younger players who can push the pace and still have the physical ability to play all the way to the end of the season and then some will be the most obvious choice if they’re looking for a roster shake-up, but to acquire guys like that in any way other than the draft will cost likely key contributors that could have the opposite effect of maintaining the team’s winning ways.
There aren’t a lot of top-tier free agents this season, but this is the NBA and there’s ultimately talent waiting to be found; The Warriors will need to do that to maintain some level of consistency amidst all the injuries and the necessary resting for their core players… and for their chances to have a shot at ring #5 for Curry, Kerr, and Draymond Green, weathering the season-long wear and tear will be one of the most important determinants on if they can compete.