The 2021-2022 Golden State Warriors' season-in-review: the front office
Thoughts on the Warriors' two-timeline plan, their free agency signings, the miraculous emergence of Gary Payton II, and an irresponsible gamble on James Wiseman, Kevon Looney, and frontcourt health.
The Warriors’ front office’s grade: B-
The Golden State Warriors capped off a dramatic 2021-2022 season by winning their fourth championship in 8 years, a dynastic run of excellence that no other NBA franchise has ever matched. But to hear the Warriors’ front office tell it, the powers that be were skeptical of their ability to make a deep playoff run even right before the playoffs!
A lot of things needed to break the Warriors’ way for them to beat the Boston Celtics in the finals. That’s not disparagement — it’s the reality of any finals victory. But it’s not like the Warriors were touched by God either.
Klay Thompson only played 32 games this year after rehabbing subsequent catastrophic leg injuries and only sometimes looked like himself, James Wiseman didn’t play a single game this year (I’d argue this actually helped the Warriors on the court, but I digress), Draymond Green’s sore calf in January turned out to be a disc injury in his lower back — one rather similar to the injury that led Milwaukee Bucks’ center, Brook Lopez, to only play 13 games this season and require surgery — that caused him to miss nearly half of the regular season, Steph Curry’s leg got injured in mid-March during the Warriors’ first game with all of their core players healthy and didn’t play again until the first game of the playoffs, and Gary Payton II’s left elbow was broken on a reckless play by Memphis Grizzlies guard, Dillon Brooks, in the second game of the Western Conference Semifinals.
To win a championship in a season with that type of duress is impressive. Legendary might be a better word for it. But make no mistake, the main reason that the Warriors won this championship is the performance of Steph Curry. At the age of 34, Steph Curry put on a Finals performance for the ages and averaged 31.2 points a game on 48/44/86 shooting splits, even when accounting for his 7/22 night in game 5 where he missed all 9 of his three-point attempts.
Just a year ago, the Warriors players sat at home or on vacation while the NBA’s conference finals played out. The Warriors sat at home largely because the front office botched several key decisions in the previous 6 months. A 15-5 run at the end of the season was accomplished in the absence of two of the Warriors’ highest profile acquisitions — Kelly Oubre Jr. and James Wiseman — while fringe NBA players like Juan Toscano-Anderson and Mychal Mulder became rotation players out of necessity. That end-of-season run was illuminating in that it provided proof of the concept that Steph Curry could elevate even a mediocre supporting cast to great heights, so long as the supporting cast played in support of their star.
To that point, the Warriors' front office did find and acquire players who knew how to orbit in Steph Curry’s gravitational pull. But they also took several risky gambles during the 2021 offseason and during the regular season. Because the Warriors won a championship, my concerns were mostly rendered irrelevant. But because my brain is broken and I am an obsessive Warriors fan who is fascinated by organizational decision-making and transactional processes, I think these gambles and their potential consequences are worth discussing as we evaluate the performance of the Warriors’ front office.
We’ll go by these decisions one by one.
The Warriors’ 2021 draft:
Although lottery picks Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody played meaningful minutes at different points in the playoffs, neither one of them saw the court when it mattered during the Finals. That shouldn’t come as a surprise! There are very few rookies in the NBA that are playable that deep into the playoffs. Even established veterans with long track records and substantial career earnings get played off the court unexpectedly come May and June. Kuminga and Moody’s non-minutes in the NBA Finals didn’t bite the Warriors, but they well could have. I’ll probably start to sound like a broken record later on in this post repeating the same basic idea: “risk x could have hurt the Warriors, but it didn’t.”
Think back to the 2019 Finals, an outlier series of hexes, voodoo magic, and shit luck. During that playoff run, the Warriors suffered injuries to Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, DeMarcus Cousins, and Kevon Looney. As a result, Alfonzo McKinnie, Jonas Jerebko, Quinn Cook, and a soon-to-retire Andrew Bogut played significant rotation minutes. Shaun Livingston, who was also retirement bound, was barely playable at his advanced age while recent draft picks, Jacob Evans and Damion Jones, were DNP fodder.
It was always unlikely that the Warriors would ever go through another run of injuries as extreme as the 2019 Finals, but injuries are a part of the playoffs. In the absences of Gary Payton II and Andre Iguodala, Steve Kerr initially turned to Damion Lee for backup wing minutes. During the WCF Semifinals against the Grizzlies, Lee’s minutes were mostly tolerable. Against the Mavericks they were awful and it was only when Lee flamed out in spectacular fashion in game 2 of that series that Moses Moody was given rotation minutes. Jonathan Kuminga showed some flashes against the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs but when he was given a shot at starting during the next round, the Warriors consistently fell into deep holes during Kuminga’s first-quarter stints and sequences like these effectively put an end to the rookie’s playoff minutes:
During the playoffs, Jonathan Kuminga had a -19.9 net rating in 99 non-garbage time minutes, per Cleaning the Glass. Moody was far better and finished with a -1.8 net rating in 63 non-garbage time minutes. While Moody did play valuable minutes in the WCF — mostly by virtue of being a bit better than Damion Lee — neither he nor Kuminga truly helped the Warriors win a championship, or at least not in the playoffs. And given the injuries to Iguodala and Gary Payton II, that is, frankly, a stroke of luck.
During game 1 of the Finals and before GPII was cleared to return from his elbow injury, Andre Iguodala played his first minutes in over a month at the expense of Moody. Iguodala was bad enough that Steve Kerr would have been in a bind had Payton not returned the next game. This is not to say that Moses Moody was incapable of playing in the Finals, but given how effective Payton was upon his return from injury, it’s fair to wonder if the outcome of this series would have changed if GPII hadn’t played. Would Kerr have tried Iguodala again? Would Moody have even gotten a chance to play upwards of 15 minutes a game?
The Warriors did, by technicality, win the argument about whether or not they could compete for a championship while straddling two timelines. I’ll grant there’s a valid argument that the presence of Kuminga and Moody allowed the Warriors to manage the health and absences of veterans like Otto Porter Jr. and Draymond Green, which in turn allowed Steve Kerr to coach with a full rotation at the start of the playoffs. But it’s intellectually dishonest to claim that the Warriors’ rookies were in any way key contributors to this championship.
With even slightly worse luck, those rookies could have been actively detrimental to the Warriors’ championship odds by being unplayable in high-leverage situations or not earning the trust of Steve Kerr. And to be clear, that wouldn’t have been the fault of the rookies, but rather the front office for not providing Kerr with players who were clearly better than Moody or Kuminga.
Therein lies a paradox: in order to acquire a player better than Moody or Kuminga, the front office would likely have needed to trade one of Moody, Kuminga, or James Wiseman because it’s not like Damion Lee or Juan Toscano-Anderson held any value on the trade market. Thankfully, the Warriors did not suffer during the Finals from Moody or Kuminga not seeing the court. But because nothing is guaranteed in life and health is a precarious thing — especially in the NBA — it’s worth remembering and acknowledging the potential downfalls of this two-timeline plan.
Had Gary Payton II not recovered absurdly fast from his broken elbow, it’s entirely possible that Warriors fans would have spent much of the summer lamenting Bob Myers’ inaction at the trade deadline. The Warriors’ finals opponent cashed in their meager war chest of mid-tier assets for a slight upgrade at the backup guard position — Derrick White — and proceeded to go on a 33-13 tear to end the season. That type of trade was one that the Warriors were capable of making but, luckily, ended up not needing because things broke in the best of ways for them.
I probably sound like an insane person to the vast majority of Warriors fans for making these criticisms! The Warriors’ two-timeline plan didn’t really work on the court in any meaningful sense, but because they won a championship on the backs of their veteran core, their young core will have the time and space to grow for the duration of their rookie contracts without the urgency or anxiety of unfulfilled championship aspirations. Over the next few years, we’ll get to find out just how much of a win that is for the Warriors’ front office, but for the sake of this season, the success of the two-timeline plan shouldn’t be counted as a success but rather narrowly averted disaster.
The Warriors’ free agency signings:
During the summer of 2021, the Warriors allowed their two highest-profile veteran acquisitions of the previous offseason, Kent Bazemore and Kelly Oubre Jr., to walk in free agency, they declined their team option on the Lacob family’s Serbian vanity project, Alen Smailagic, and they traded second-year forward, Eric Paschall, for a lightly protected draft pick to open up a roster spot. The Warriors entered free agency with the following players under guaranteed contracts: Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green, Kevon Looney, Jordan Poole, Damion Lee, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Moses Moody, Jonathan Kuminga, and James Wiseman.
In the opening days of free agency, the Warriors were most frequently linked to two targets: Los Angeles Clippers’ forward, Nicolas Batum, and soon-to-be Brooklyn Net, Patty Mills. Batum ended up taking a below-market contract to return to the Clippers, which caused some consternation amongst Warriors fans who fretted about the team’s ability to sign veterans on sweetheart deals. That consternation ramped up considerably when Mills took a two-year deal with the Nets and reached a boiling point when Bazemore, who started at the end of the 2020-2021 season for the Warriors, reportedly rejected an offer of more money from the Warriors to sign a minimum deal with the Los Angeles Lakers:
The Warriors’ first free-agent signing of the summer was Otto Porter Jr., a 28-year-old former max contract wing whose career had stalled out after a spate of injuries and stints on lottery-bound teams. The theoretical appeal of Porter Jr. was obvious — he hadn’t shot below 37.5% from three since the Obama administration, he defended capably, and was always a solid rebounder from the wing. But the reason that Porter Jr. was available to the Warriors — and on a minimum contract! — was his substantial list of injuries that caused him to play 56, 14, and then 28 games over the previous three seasons.
All of this is to say that Porter Jr. was a brilliant signing, but not exactly a galaxy brain one. Low-risk/high-reward free agents are exactly the type of player that pretty much every NBA team circles in the offseason. Kudos to the Warriors for signing him! Porter Jr. reportedly turned down a mid-level exception (MLE) offer from at least one team to join the Warriors, but these Warriors were not your typical free-agency suitor.
Most franchises that follow up a 15-win season with a loss in the play-in tournament don’t get a meeting with free agents like OPJ. The Warriors signed Otto Porter Jr. in the summer of 2021, not because of the brilliance of the front office or their decision-making in the previous two seasons, which brought us James Wiseman, the Kelly Oubre Jr. Experience, Alan Smailagic, and Brad Wanamaker and Nico Mannion as backup point guards — the Warriors signed Otto Porter Jr. because of who they Warriors were in their glory days, which is owed mostly to Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Steve Kerr.
On August 3rd, the Warriors signed veteran forward, Nemanja Bjelica to a minimum contract. Three days later, former Warrior and Finals MVP, Andre Iguodala, announced that he would return to the Warriors on a minimum contract as well. Bjelica was a less obvious target, but the return of Iguodala felt fateful, if not somewhat predictable. Iguodala, who entered the offseason at age 37, might have been able to command a larger contract for another contending team, but for obvious reasons, he wanted to return to the Warriors and was willing to a pay cut to do.
In typical Iguodala fashion, he broke the news of his return to the Bay Area on his own terms in an article published in The New York Times and said this about his time with the Warriors:
“Who would have thought I’d have the opportunity to go back to the place where I was able to have, whatever you want to call it, legacy years, in terms of the accomplishments, winning multiple championships, the relationships that I was able to build with some of my closest friends and teammates? [...] The relationship with the fans, the relationship with the Bay, the opportunity to end it here, was just something special.”
Bjelica was similarly enthused about joining the Warriors and said in an interview about his contract negotiations:
"It took less than a minute [to accept] [...] I just said yes. I didn't think [for] one second. To be part of this historic organization is pretty exciting.”
All three of the Warriors’ summer free-agency signings played meaningful minutes in both the regular season and the playoffs. Porter Jr. reinvented himself as a rebounding stretch 4 who eventually started at the center position during the NBA Finals — imagine reading that sentence aloud to yourself in 2013 when Porter Jr. was drafted 3rd and expected to be an All-Star wing! — and had the best net rating of any Warrior player in the playoffs, per Cleaning the Glass.
Bjelica began the regular season with a bang as he helped close out the Lakers on the road with brilliant passing and secondary playmaking alongside Steph Curry and Draymond Green. His three-point shot briefly went the way of Omri Casspi during the regular season and he did lose playing time later in the season to Jonathan Kuminga and OPJ, but re-emerged in the Western Conference Finals to give the Warriors valuable minutes as they closed out the Mavericks in 5 games.
Iguodala’s actual on-court contributions were few and far in between as he only played 31 games in the regular season and appeared in only 7 games during the Warriors’ playoff run. But even at his advanced age, Iguodala still displayed his defensive chops, playmaking ability, and rare bursts of explosive athleticism. As should be expected for a player at his age, each highlight-reel dunk or no-look pass was matched by a demoralizing sign of aging, but Iguodala’s value to the Warriors came mostly behind closed doors where he, in his own words, “put out fires,” mentored the Warriors’ young core, and provided advice to players like Gary Payton II, who said this about the aging legend:
“I go to [Iguodala] about anything [...] If I need to know something in the game, or how to do something.”
In an interview with The Athletic’s Marcus Thompson and Anthony Slater, Bob Myers said this about their free-agency additions:
“A lot of people didn’t celebrate our offseason, in terms of minimum signings. [...] We actually thought we got what we wanted. A lot of that was backed in analytics and fit. That was a new thing for us.”
To the Warriors’ credit, they nailed the free-agency period and got an excellent return on their low-cost investments, and managed to survive not touching their taxpayer MLE, which would have allowed them to offer a nearly $6 million contract to a free agent.
Gary Payton II and the battle for the Warriors’ 15th roster spot
At the end of the maddening 2020-21 season, Gary Payton II was on the Warriors’ roster but did not manage to carve out a rotation spot. The Ringer’s Seerat Sohi summed up GPII’s time with last year’s team quite well:
“In the third quarter, Marcus Smart, Payton’s defender, helped off him to double Andrew Wiggins, giving Payton the space to make the kind of hard cut that now generates anticipatory murmurs from Warriors fans, already celebrating the incoming dunk. But Boston sagged into the paint, cutting off the passing angle and leaving Green, a sub-30 percent shooter, open for 3. Juan Toscano-Anderson, who averaged less than one made 3 per game, was on the floor too. With Klay Thompson out for the season, Curry’s gravitational pull alone wasn’t enough to unclog the paint and allow Payton an open path to the rim.”
Payton joined the Warriors’ summer league team and proceeded to impress with explosive athleticism, hilariously good efficiency (GPII shot 86.8% EFG!), and solid work on the glass. In offseason podcasts, Anthony Slater talked about GPII’s unwavering belief that if he finally got a chance to be on an NBA team’s roster during training camp — something he’d never done in his previous 5 seasons chasing the NBA dream — that he’d play himself into a full-time roster spot.
Payton didn’t get that chance. An inguinal hernia — one located near the groin — required an offseason procedure and GPII missed the first weeks of training camp and the first few games of the preseason. During training camp pressers with local media, the Warriors’ veterans made it clear that they expected and wanted the Warriors to sign former Celtics’ guard, Avery Bradley, to fill the team’s 15th roster spot.
Payton made his preseason debut in the second-to-last game before the start of the regular season and proceeded to win a roster spot in an explosive 11-minute stint where he clowned opponents defensively and had three dunks. Bob Myers recounted:
“Steph turned and gave me an, ‘All right, all right … ‘[...] I gave him one of those looks, like: ‘See, we’re not idiots. We know a little bit.”
The Warriors’ front office scored a huge win with their decision to keep Payton despite pressure from the Warriors’ veterans to keep Bradley. But it’s worth mentioning that the Warriors tempted the fates by cutting Payton after training camp in the hopes that no other team would claim him on waivers all so they could save money on luxury tax penalties.
Gary Payton II played himself into a huge role with this Warriors’ team and became essential to their championship aspirations. That’s quite rare for a 15th man. The Warriors’ front office deserves kudos for finding Payton (The Athletic’s Anthony Slater credited Kent Lacob, who desperately needed a win after bungling the Alen Smailagic experiment for the GPII acquisition) and the Warriors’ coaching staff did a brilliant job of using him in unorthodox ways that would have been unthinkable even seasons ago. But I don’t think that even the most optimistic of Payton fans in the front office planned for him to become a spot starter in the playoffs for the Warriors.
Payton was found money for the Warriors and I’m sure the Warriors’ brain trust would admit as much. There’s no shame in being lucky! Every championship team needs a healthy dose of luck to get a trophy. But I don’t want people to forget how remarkable the story and rise of Gary Payton II were in the context of this Warriors’ season, lest our collective memory of this championship run falsely spin the Payton acquisition into an act of clairvoyance. The Warriors, to their credit, provided a great environment for his skill set to be of immense use, but this story was made possible by Gary Payton II being an utter outlier of an NBA player.
James Wiseman and the Warriors’ center rotation
The Warriors’ decision to stick with and build a roster around a guaranteed rotation spot for James Wiseman was the biggest risk the front office took this past season. That risk became more reckless and unjustifiable with each month that James Wiseman’s terminally long rehab dragged on, which put a bigger burden on Kevon Looney and Draymond Green to stay healthy for a deep playoff run.
During the summer of 2021, the Warriors publicly projected optimism that Wiseman would return to action by the start of training camp. Per Anthony Slater, the Warriors neglected to pick up another big man in the offseason — and came into this season with even less center depth than the previous season! — because “the decision-makers wanted to leave a clear path to playing time for James Wiseman.” Considering that the healthy, rookie-year version of Wiseman was one of three players in the Steve Kerr era to ever sport a negative net rating alongside Steph Curry (Anderson Varejao and Kelly Oubre Jr. were the two others), I don’t think that playing time should have been guaranteed for him. But considering the context and the expectation that Wiseman would have had most of the regular season to slowly test and integrate himself into a win-chasing Warriors’ roster, I can, at the very least, make sense of the desire — but not the wisdom — to clear a path for Wiseman.
But things went south quickly. On December 7th, only days before James Wiseman had a second surgery on his damaged meniscus that the Warriors hid for over a month, Slater published an article about Wiseman’s delayed return. Here are some choice quotes.
Nearly eight months after meniscus surgery, James Wiseman is still not cleared for full contact 5-on-5 work. Steve Kerr gave that non-update update pregame. It’s become increasingly clear that the Warriors’ young center — attached to so much promise, pressure and expectation — won’t return to an NBA court until some time in 2022.
“Umm. Where are we — December 6th?” Steve Kerr said. “So, he hasn’t scrimmaged yet. By the time he comes back and scrimmages, it’s going to take some time from there. You guys can do the math. I don’t want to be a headline.”
[...]
On Nov. 1, a day before the Warriors met the Hornets (and LaMelo Ball) at home, the team released an official update on Wiseman, which was the most positive news about him since the surgery. Click here for the release. It said that Wiseman had been “cleared to participate in full team practices.” Full team practices, it was presumed, meant scrimmages.
Kerr and Wiseman came to the podium soon after the release and clarified. He hadn’t yet been cleared to scrimmage, but it didn’t feel too far away. Or at least it wasn’t presented that way.
“I’m getting there,” Wiseman said. “It’s just based off how I feel. It’s all in the air. It’s all uncertain. Just waiting for Rick to give me that green light. It could be soon. Based on how I feel.”
That quote came on Nov. 1. Two weeks later, the Warriors went out on a road trip, but left Wiseman and Thompson back in the Bay Area with Celebrini and a few coaches for what was initially presented to reporters as combo scrimmages for both.
Here is Kerr from Charlotte on Nov. 13: “We have players coming into the gym who are going to play with Klay and James. The plan is to put them through some scrimmages and hopefully it goes smoothly and we can ramp it up slowly.”
Thompson did begin scrimmages that week. Wiseman didn’t. Thompson is now entering a fourth week in unconstrained game settings. Wiseman is still waiting for that green light.
Here is Kerr on Nov. 23: “The injury, the meniscus tear, it’s not really a linear improvement like an ACL or an Achilles where you can map it out. A meniscal tear, you can’t really map it out as easily because there’s more possibility for variance in how long it’s going to take. James is doing fine. There’s no structural issue. We’re just being very, very cautious. He’s doing 1-on-1, 2-on-2 stuff, drill work. But Rick is not yet comfortable having him scrimmage.”
Once Wiseman is cleared for scrimmages, the internal expectation is that it’ll be a much quicker ramp up and return to game action than Thompson needs. So, while it feels like Thompson is much closer to a return, Wiseman might not be too far behind. The eight-month mark is Dec. 15. The nine-month mark is Jan. 15.
About five weeks after the publication of that article, Slater broke the news that Wiseman needed a second surgery in mid-December. At this point in time, the Warriors still projected optimism about Wiseman’s potential return. Kerr told Slater:
“His rehab is going really well,” Kerr said. “His knee is feeling good. His spirits are up, he’s bouncing around practice — high energy. He’s getting ready to play with some contact. It’s exciting just to see a smile on his face and to see him back after this long of an absence.”
But even with that level of optimism, Slater still had the sense to predict that, “If Wiseman doesn’t return until near or after the All-Star break, which seems to be the trend line, there won’t be much acclimation time before this championship-hungry core is in playoff mode.”
All of this is to say that despite the most optimistic views of Wiseman’s return, his second surgery in December effectively put the kibosh on the slim chance that Wiseman would contribute meaningfully to this Warriors’ team or have any type of impact in the playoffs. Really, none of this is Wiseman’s fault. Considering just how bad he looked in his rookie season, it was always a stretch that Wiseman would be a useful contributor to this Warriors’ team.
Even in the most optimistic timeline, Wiseman was always going to spend the offseason rehabbing. You’d probably expect him to be about 75% of what he was as a rookie — the 7th worst non-garbage time rating of any NBA player per Cleaning the Glass — until he got his footing, but even as it became clear that Wiseman wasn’t going to play in training camp, or the month of November, or the calendar year 2021, the team-friendly media lackeys at NBCS Bay Area still ran coverage for the front office. Tim Kawakami, Joe Lacob’s friendly mouthpiece at The Athletic, was also quite aggressive in pushing pro-Wiseman propaganda:
I also cannot count the number of times I heard Warriors’ play-by-play announcer, Bob Fitzgerald, muse about how James Wiseman might look against Steven Adams or other brute bigs in the western conference. That’s to be expected from Fitz — a Sean Hannity-level propagandist — but what really felt absurd was the “reporting” from NBCS’ Bay Area’s writers regarding Wiseman. Take this article, for example, titled “Kerr provides proof that Wiseman’s rehab is going ‘really well.’”
The extent of the proof “provided” in this article is this quote from Steve Kerr:
"His rehab is going really well," Kerr said to reporters. "His knee is feeling good. His spirits are up, he's bouncing around practice -- high energy. He's getting ready to play with some contact. It's exciting just to see a smile on his face and to see him back after this long of an absence.
Two days after the publication of that article, Anthony Slater broke the news of Wiseman’s December setback and subsequent surgery. For two-and-a-half months of the regular season, the Warriors’ decision-makers were well aware of the fact that James Wiseman’s rehab was not, in fact, going well, and yet, said decision-makers put no stop to the Bay Area propaganda machine’s glorification of Wiseman and his tortured rehab process. Again, none of this is Wiseman’s fault, but it still reeks of dishonesty, especially for an ownership group that has overseen PR for the following nebulous and shady injury rehabs:
In November of 2012, Andrew Bogut had to reveal to the Bay Area media that what was initially described as arthroscopic surgery for his ankle was actually a microfracture surgery. Bogut went out of his way to tell reporters that playing in back-to-backs was “not going to happen,” and said, “I’m still a little ways off. It’s an interesting rehab, because there’s no real timeline for it. I’ll be back when I’m ready to play at 100 percent.” All of this came after the Warriors had insisted Bogut would be ready to play without restrictions at the start of the regular season.
In 2018, Andre Iguodala missed games in the playoffs with what he later described as a “spider web fracture” in his left knee. Iguodala said after the fact, “The injury kind of bothered me because there was a lot going on behind closed doors that was bothering me,” […] “I hadn’t missed a playoff game my entire career. It isn’t about waiting around. I know what it was. A lot of people knew what it was. But I just went along with it.”
Just last year, Steph Curry’s tailbone contusion turned out to be a fracture, information that was only revealed to the public via Kent Bazemore.
With all of the knowledge the Warriors had about the state of James Wiseman’s knee, it’s worth remembering that Draymond Green sustained the injury that would keep him out for nearly half of the season only four days before the announcement of Wiseman’s first setback. The full extent of Green’s injury, which was initially designated as calf tightness, wasn’t publicly known until January 16th, three days after the public revalation of Wiseman’s setback and about 5-6 weeks from the approximate date of Wiseman’s surgery. Green was expected to be out for at least another two weeks, but about two weeks later, the Warriors announced that he would miss at least another two weeks and be slated for a re-evaluation “sometime before the All-Star break.” On February 16, the Warriors announced that Green would likely return at some point after the All-Star break, and then in early March, Green himself said that he intended to return on March 14th against the Washington Wizards.
Green did, in fact, make his return on March 14th, more than a month since the NBA trade deadline of February 10, 2022. So for those of you keeping track, the Warriors went into the trade deadline knowing perfectly well that neither Green nor Wiseman would play before the All-Star break and that there was a chance that their absences could stretch into March. The Warriors did manage to find playing time for Jonathan Kuminga in the absences of Green and Wiseman but at great risk to the health of Kevon Looney, who didn’t miss a game and defied all expectations to play the 4th-most ever games in an NBA regular season + playoff period.
Looney deserves immense credit for working as hard as he did to become an unlikely iron man — this article from NBA.com details the insane lengths Looney went to in order to fix his diet and a “compromised” gut of “bad bacteria “ — but it was always irresponsible to force that much responsibility onto his body.
Since Looney came into the NBA in 2015, he’s had two hip surgeries, a broken collarbone, core surgery, and a neuropathic condition for which there is no cure and that causes periodic numbness in his limbs. Kevon Looney has always been an excellent role player when healthy but expecting him to play a full season was an absolutely insane and unjustifiable gamble even before the stalled rehab of James Wiseman and the unexpected injury to Draymond Green.
To his credit, Bob Myers seemed to understand just how much he was asking of Kevon Looney. During a February 1st appearance on 95.7 The Game, Myers said this (credit to @fakelogic of the Light Years’ discord for transcribing Myers’ appearance):
"We need them both [(Draymond/Wiseman] if you're talking about what's coming up in the playoffs.....Small has worked. That's a testament to what Looney's done. Last night we put Juan out at the 5. Kuminga has played some 5. Bjelica is banged up. So we're--I don't even want to voice it, but Looney has to stay healthy. He HAS to stay healthy."
About a week after Myers’ talked about the need for Looney to stay healthy, James Wiseman got cleared for contact in practices. Exactly a month after that, Wiseman was cleared for participation in G-League games. But in the lead-up to Wiseman’s anticipated return, Steve Kerr went out of his way to reiterate — forcefully — that the big man needed “a thousand reps” and encouraged people to “temper their expectations” for his performance.
Two weeks after Wiseman made his G-League debut, the Warriors shut him down for the season after revealing a few days prior that he’d suffered another setback and swelling in his surgically repaired knee. This setback, which occurred about six weeks after the trade deadline, left the Warriors with exactly two healthy centers. All of a sudden, the urgency of Looney staying healthy became even more extreme.
The Warriors had few options at their disposal at this point in the season — with the trade deadline long gone, their only path to adding a center on the roster would have been to explore the slim pickings of the post-deadline free agent list and cut one of Damion Lee or Juan Toscano-Anderson. That didn’t materialize, but the Warriors could have at least picked up a big man with one of their two-way contracts and cut Chirs Chiozza, who could barely crack into the rotation even when Andre Iguodala and Steph Curry missed games, so they at least had some insurance in the frontcourt.
To be fair, Kevon Looney, had 0 intention of taking any rest days as he had stated very publicly his goal to play all 82 games of the regular season. But I don’t think there would have been any downside to just having one more big body on the court to absorb some minutes on the nights that Looney was clearly flagging, like the LITERAL DAYS BEFORE AND AFTER THE TRADE DEADLINE when, in subsequent games, Utah Jazz backup big, Hassan Whiteside, laid waste to the Warriors’ minuscule frontcourt in a 26-point blowout loss and the New York Knicks frontcourt beat the Warriors up on the interior.
Again, most of my points are moot! Looney managed to stay healthy and turned in a top-5 rebounding performance in any playoff run in NBA history — clearly, the lack of frontcourt depth or insurance policy for Looney did not hurt him when it mattered most. But the risk that the Warriors took by banking on James Wiseman and then repeatedly declining to do literally anything to shore up their center depth after repeated setbacks to Wiseman cannot be understated. To do nothing was a staggering act of inaction and irresponsibility for a front office who should know better after having front-row seats to one of the most gutting runs of injuries in 2019 — and in a failed championship run no less!
If luck hadn’t broken the Warriors' way, there was no good backup plan at the center spot. Consider their options in a worst-case scenario where Looney missed time in the playoffs: Draymond Green, who had already missed time with a concerning back/disc injury, could have been pressed into even more minutes at the 5 and likely exposed himself to more wear, tear, and fatigue; Nemanja Bjelica, who only played 10 minutes a game in the playoffs, could have played more; Otto Porter Jr., who has his own extensive injury history, could have seen more minutes at the 5; Jonathan Kuminga, who was a huge net-negative in the playoffs, might have had to play spot minutes at the 5; Andre Iguodala, whose body was clearly breaking down, might have been asked to sacrifice his body once and for all to play the 5 in short bursts.
Do any of those options make you feel comfortable? Do you honestly think that the Warriors would have won the championship, let alone a single playoff series if Looney had missed significant time?
The Warriors never had to face the consequences of their inaction, for which they are quite lucky, and which makes quotes like this one from Bob Myers, which came after the Warriors’ championship victory, feel wildly dishonest:
“I knew we needed to give them a chance, [...] “I didn’t know what would happen, but I knew we had to let them finish on their own terms. We owed it to those guys to give them that chance to get beat, because it hasn’t happened when they’re healthy.”
Here’s another Myers quote, courtesy of The Athletic’s Sam Amick:
“What I said, and I said to our owner and believe and still believe was we owe it to them — meaning those three guys — to give them a chance to succeed or fail. And they hadn’t had that yet, for two years. And they didn’t even get it through the regular season. … So I’ve always held on to that. But there was no thought of ‘Well, we’ve got to break this up.’ We just thought that they’ve done so well together, let’s not be the ones to end it. If it ends because we get beat or things change or whatever happens, fine. But let’s not be the reason they didn’t get another shot at this thing. That was the motivation.”
Because the Warriors won a championship, Bob Myers can claim with a straight face that he and his front office gave the nucleus of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Steve Kerr a shot at winning a championship. But it would have only taken one injury to Kevon Looney to “be the reason they didn’t get another shot at this thing” because of the front office’s unwillingness to shore up their frontcourt after taking a risky bet on the ability of James Wiseman to help this Warriors’ team, even after it was clear that this game would not pay off this season. Winning cures everything, so many people will forget the whole Wiseman and Warriors’ center rotation saga, for which we are all lucky. Let us hope that next season, the Warriors come up lucky again.
B-? I give you an F- for your grading system. The Warriors front-office decisions in 2021 directly led to a championship in 2022. You don't get less than an A grade for a championship, end of story.
Congratulations on your ability to see the glass half empty when it is empirically totally full.