Are the Golden State Warriors still light years ahead?

The Golden State Warriors thought they were “light years ahead.” As bad luck mounts, it’s time for the entire organization to prove it.

This was supposed to be, if not the Golden State Warriors’ year, then at least a chance for them to show, after a disastrous 2019-20 season that they still deserved to be seen as one of the league’s elite squads. Yet already, with the season not set to begin for another month, the possibility of that happening seems to be slipping away. Last week, Klay Thompson suffered an Achilles injury that will almost certainly cause him to miss the entire season for the second consecutive year. But the Thompson injury may not be the biggest issue facing the franchise, even if it is the most obvious one.

As the 2015-16 regular season came to a close, Warriors owner Joe Lacob gave an interview to the New York Times in which he claimed the franchise would rule the NBA for years to come, calling Golden State “light years ahead of probably every other team in structure, in planning, in how we’re going to go about things.” It was a bold statement, as well as a bit of a reckless one, but at the time you could see where he was coming from. The team had just won their first championship in four decades and was on their way to wrapping up a record 73-9 regular season. However, this quote was widely mocked just a few months later as the Warriors infamously blew a 3-1 Finals lead, showing that even if they were to rule the league for years to come, they wouldn’t do so that year.

Of course, that same summer they signed Kevin Durant and won the next two championships before a bevy of bad luck took hold. In Game 5 of the 2019 Finals, Kevin Durant returned after missing several games due to injury. It seemed likely that, with him back in the line-up, the team would win their third consecutive title and their fourth in five years. However, that same game, he suffered an Achilles injury. Three nights later, Klay Thompson tore his ACL. Neither has played a game since.

Last season was supposed to be a bit of a gap year with Thompson’s absence, but it became a much more pronounced one after Curry broke his hand five games into the season. The Warriors subsequently had the worst record in the league, losing more games than they had in the last two seasons combined.

The Warriors have been hit by more than their share of bad luck but can they bounce back?

The question now is if they can bounce back. Even without Thompson, the Warriors still have Curry who — due to missing almost the entirety of last season after sharing the limelight with Kevin Durant for three years before that — is perhaps being a bit underrated. After all, the last full season Curry played before Durant joined he became the first unanimous MVP in league history and put up one of the greatest offensive performances ever. He is not likely to replicate that performance this season, but even if he merely recreates the performance of the seasons since, Curry will still be one of the best and most impactful players in the NBA. Over the last decade, he helped make a mediocre team a good one and then a good one a transcendent one. There’s no reason to imagine he cannot perform a similar feat once the new season begins.

The bigger questions are about his teammates. Can Draymond Green still play great defense and provide playmaking as in years past? Was his underperforming last year the start of an inexorable decline or just a symptom of the Warriors’ lackluster prospects? Can Andrew Wiggins finally live up to his potential and be a formidable option for the team? Will James Wiseman be able to slide into the rotation and be an immediate contributor? Can Jordan Poole make more than 33 percent of his shots?

The Warriors that made five consecutive Finals runs were a great team because of their core of All-NBA talents. However, no NBA team is able to win as much and as consistently as these Warriors squads did without depth. And now, that depth is gone. Almost all of the players who provided support to Curry, Thompson, and Green in the past have retired or moved on, replaced by cheaper, less impressive options. It’s just hard to be too bullish about a team that will be giving major minutes to Marquese Chriss and Jordan Poole rather than Shaun Livingston and Andre Iguodala.

Some of the problems facing the Warriors have been brought upon by nothing more than bad luck. They could not have foreseen the injuries to Thompson, Durant, and Curry that undercut their title hopes so immediately. Nor could they have imagined a global pandemic affecting the salary cap, and presumably, their offseason plans. But bad luck is not the only reason the Warriors’ future appears uncertain.

Another issue facing the team is the self-satisfaction of the team’s leadership. It seems as if they thought that their success was something they had earned and something they would continue to accumulate by virtue of their inherent worthiness. As the “light years ahead” quote shows, Lacob believed they were just smarter than the rest of the league, but now they appear like a team that is a bit aimless, unsure of what to do in the immediate aftermath of one of the most successful stretches in NBA history. Are they trying to build for the future with the young players they’ve accumulated or trying to contend now? Do they intend to use the Timberwolves pick in a trade to get an immediate infusion of veteran talent this season or use it themselves next summer? While their rise was clearly well thought out, what has come since has seemed like a series of moves made impulsively, with no real underlying plan behind them.

In the same interview in which Joe Lacob said that the Warriors were “light years ahead” of their competition, he also claimed that “none of this is an accident.” Lacob did not see the Warriors’ success was not a result of inheriting a team that already had a player who would become a two-time MVP on its roster, but of his own brilliance. Admittedly, the team he and Peter Gruber had inherited in 2010 was a bit of a mess, but winning championships is hard and maintaining a squad capable of winning them year after year is perhaps even more difficult. Maybe the Warriors will make a series of great moves over the coming months, Curry will again put forth an MVP-worthy campaign, and the Warriors will once again be at the top of the NBA hierarchy. But for now, it looks like the franchise must not have been as far ahead of the rest of the league as they imagined.