A three-word phrase will define Steph Curry’s final years with the Golden State Warriors.
It’s not “One More Run,” “Sense of Urgency,” or even the infamous “Light Years Ahead.”
No, it’ll be “Trades Are Hard.”
I can see the T-shirts already.
Except it seems that trades are not, in fact, hard for other teams. After the shocking Luka Dončić to the Lakers trade on Saturday night, De’Aaron Fox was traded from Sacramento to San Antonio on Sunday.
I expect plenty more dominoes to fall before Thursday afternoon.
But I don’t expect any bigger names to move.
And I surely don’t expect them to move to the Warriors.
While the rest of the league is hammering out deals, the Warriors want you to know that they’re trying oh so hard to land a second superstar to play next to Steph Curry.
Yes, apparently, the team’s most glaring issue for the last two years — a problem that should have been solved during the 2023 offseason, at the 2024 trade deadline, or this past offseason — has just now become a priority for the Dubs.
There are mere hours left in this transfer window of sorts. It’s as if they’ve been asleep at the wheel and woke up as the car was going through the guard rail.
Two years of late-game struggles as Curry has to fend off triple-teams to get up a clean shot because it’s him or no one.
Two years of unimpeachable evidence that says Andrew Wiggins will never again be the player he was in the 2022 playoffs.
Two years of Jonathan Kuminga flashing potential but never star-level potency.
Chris Paul has come and gone for nothing in return. Klay Thompson has already been scorned by his new team. Bob Myers walked away from millions to sit at an ESPN desk. Andre Iguodala has retired and will have his number retired at the end of the month.
All the while, the Warriors have done nothing to address the big, glaring, whitehead-in-the-middle-of-your-forehead problem.
When he was asked before this season who the second scorer on the Dubs would be, general manager Mike Dunleavy suggested, with a straight face, that Brandin Podziemski can “score the ball.”
But sure, they’ll get around to solving the problem now that the Lakers have lucked into the cleanest two-timeline plan since Kobe and Shaq.
And my, how much work the Warriors’ front office has done over the last few days. They’re insistent you know about it. Yes, the Warriors have reportedly called about LeBron James (he’s not moving), Kevin Durant (as of Monday afternoon, the Warriors aren’t even close to meeting Phoenix’s rightfully exorbitant asking price), Paul George (really, again?), and Giannis Antetokounmpo (this is when it starts to become comical).
The Lakers landed Dončić; why can’t the Warriors receive an MVP candidate in a lopsided trade?
That’s how this all works, right?
Oh, and I forgot to mention that Jimmy Butler, the league’s most toxic star and the only guy the Warriors might be able to get, turned down a trade to the Bay.
Trades are, indeed, hard when your dreamland fantasy doesn’t line up with reality.
They’re even tougher when procrastination becomes desperation.
This is the part of the column where I remind you, once again, that Curry turns 37 years old in a matter of weeks. I made an appointment on Monday that will take place after March 14. (I guess I’m showing more foresight than the Dubs.)
There’s nothing magical about Curry being 37 years old, save for the fact that he, the 11th oldest active player in the league, will then undeniably be in his late 30s, with two years remaining on his contract.
He’s still a deserved All-Star starter this season. Will that still be true next year? The year after?
It’s a question that the Warriors should have been asking since they needed Curry to score 50 in Game 7 against the Kings, only to be mopped off the floor in six games by the Lakers in the 2023 playoffs. It should have been at the forefront of every conversation at Chase Center after the Kings embarrassed the Dubs in last year’s play-in tournament.
How much longer can the man who built everything the Warriors’ brass holds up as totems of their excellence maintain that level of play? What can the Warriors do to maximize the remaining years of greatness?
The Warriors’ front office might think too highly of itself to grasp the severity of the situation, but these questions are downright existential.
And if the answer is to land another All-Star player — a resolution so obvious even regional gasbag columnists can make it — you need to put in more than a few days of work before a deadline to make something like that happen.
Even then, it’s implausible.
At some point in the next few days, I’d have to think the Warriors’ brass will come to the same conclusion. They’ll say, “Well, we tried,” and then make another move: shedding salary to duck under the NBA’s luxury tax threshold.
The Warriors don’t have the foresight or savvy to build a contending team with one of the greatest players of all time operating at an All-NBA level, but they will keep winning on the balance sheet.