The last week has represented perhaps the most challenging stretch of the Warriors‘ current era. Since last Monday, the club has lost four of five games, including three straight, and has dealt with the ongoing fallout of a much-publicized confrontation between All-Stars Draymond Green and Kevin Durant.
Despite their week of turmoil, the Warriors remain confident in their outlook going forward, writes Nick Friedell of ESPN.com. Golden State has too much talent not to turn things around, especially once Stephen Curry is healthy enough to return to action, and winning figures to help solve any other problems that ail the team, as Quinn Cook observes.
“I just think if we would have won these past two games, nobody would be talking about it anymore,” Cook said of last week’s Green/Durant incident. “I think we just got to be better on the floor, and nobody will remember this once we start winning again.”
As Friedell observes in a separate piece for ESPN.com, head coach Steve Kerr isn’t complaining about the Dubs’ recent struggles, pointing out that the franchise has lived a “charmed existence” for the last several years.
“This is the real NBA,” Kerr said. “We haven’t been in the real NBA the last few years. We’ve been in this dream. And so now we’re faced real adversity and we got to get out of it ourselves.”
As the Warriors prepare for a Wednesday showdown against the Thunder, let’s round up a few more notes on the club:
- Don’t expect the Warriors to pursue Carmelo Anthony if and when he’s waived by Houston, says Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated. Spears hears from a source that Golden State has no interest in Anthony.
- Monte Poole of NBC Sports Bay Area lays out all the reasons why it wouldn’t make any sense for the Warriors to consider trading Kevin Durant or Draymond Green this season, despite their recent altercation and possible lingering tension.
- Is Green worth a maximum-salary investment? Frank Urbina of HoopsHype explores that subject, concluding that – as valuable as he is – it’s hard to imagine Green securing a long-term max deal when he eventually reaches free agency in 2020 at age 30.
- In an interesting piece for The Athletic, Anthony Slater explores how the modern media landscape makes it difficult for NBA players and teams to quickly move past incidents like last week’s confrontation between Durant and Green.
So many teams (Wizards, Thunder, Rockets, Trailblazers, etc…) are completely hamstrung because of max (or close to it) deals given to players who were great at the time.
The cap is just too strict for that kind of spending. If a player isn’t literally top 5 in the NBA, the team should not give him a max. Cause otherwise you have an awesome player surrounded by a roster you can’t afford to improve.
That’s my opinion.
The cap is what creates parity though. If there was no cap, these modern day players would just team up on 2 or 3 teams making the rest of the league look jv. As it is the warriors are already kinda doing that. Makes me miss 80-90s ball when these wanted to play against each other.
Parity? So, currently, players *don’t* cluster into a handful of superteams?
For many players the max actually represents a discount over what they’d get in an unrestricted market. Kyrie or Klay at 25-30 mil is a much better deal than Bazemore at 17.
In my opinion the problem is that when players are eligible for this big contracts are around 30 which for all of them at the end of the contract make it look bad, for example KD at 35 if he gets the super max with GSW won’t be worth 47-48MM as simple as that. What I believe is that the players are at their most productive the younger they are, so their big contracts should come earlier in their career, make their money & then later on when they are near 30 get smaller contracts that at the end of them they don’t look like albatross, a real shame the way it is structured, as we know this is a young man’s game, the NBA, so why are the ol’ men paid the big bucks, meanwhile the young players are paid peanuts in comparison. Anyway that is how I see it.
Too bad that Anthony doesn’t seem to be welcome in Golden State… that would have made for some really fun “revenge” games vs Houston (and OKC).
Sam Amick said yesterday that the Draymond-Durant stuff has pretty much died down within the team. Durant and Thompson have struggled with Curry and Green out.
Warriors will be fine by the playoffs which is all that matters
Stop Durant all your issues just play the game and move on next year if you choose. We all knew it was a short run with ya but the mouth and tough guy attitude needs to stop. Yes Green too lol
This is entirely fabricated by “media”, aka propagandists. Just a bunch of clowns with zero insight peddling their absurd opinions as fact.
Am I the only one thinking a team with Klay Thompson and Kevin Garnett should be able to win? That’s what worries me most.
Perhaps Kerr has had such an easy ride he’s forgotten how to/never had to actually coach?