Who’s Most to Blame for Golden State Warriors’ Latest Playoff Whiff?

The Golden State Warriors were steamrolled by the Sacramento Kings in the 9-10 play-in game on Tuesday night, 118-94, ending their 2023-24 campaign shy of the playoffs.

It’s the third time in five years that the Warriors have missed the playoffs, and this particular season feels like it could be the impetus for dramatic changes.

Klay Thompson is declining and will be a free agent this summer. Stephen Curry is 36 and finally looked human this season. And Draymond Green’s suspensions were a big reason why Golden State found itself in a win-or-go-home situation in the first place.

Having said that, the Warriors were still solid when all three were on the floor (plus-6.2 points per 100 possessions), so what were the real reasons Golden State finished 10th in the West and ultimately missed the playoffs?

Golden State general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. looks like he has at least a couple hits from the 2023 draft.

Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis should be, at the very least, solid rotation players for the foreseeable future. But to attach superstar upside to either would be overly optimistic.

The Warriors’ opportunities to find that kind of player came in 2020 and 2021.

Typically competitive franchises taking advantage of a gap year is nothing new. David Robinson missing most of the season prior to Tim Duncan’s draft set the San Antonio Spurs up to win for decades.

Curry playing five games in 2019-20 opened up a similar window for Golden State, but then-GM Bob Myers followed that campaign by using the No. 2 overall pick on James Wiseman. He, of course, isn’t even on the Warriors anymore. Only 42 players in the three-point era had fewer wins over replacement player through their age-22 campaign, and LaMelo Ball, Tyrese Haliburton, Onyeka Okongwu, Tyrese Maxey and Desmond Bane were among those selected after Wiseman in 2020.

The next year, they had the No. 7 pick. And though Jonathan Kuminga has probably changed the perception of himself a bit this season, Franz Wagner, Alperen Şengün, Trey Murphy III and Herbert Jones were picked after him.

The draft is far from an exact science. And no one bats 1.000 with their picks, but just imagine the position the Warriors might be in if even one of Ball, Haliburton, Wagner or Şengün were on the roster.

Staying at the top of the league is hard, especially after a decade of excellence, and missing those opportunities may have been the difference between making and missing the playoffs in 2024.

Head coach Steve Kerr, of course, doesn’t deserve all the blame. He’s won four championships and has probably taken more heat than most dynasty patriarchs. He also gets at least a bit of a pass for this season’s issues, since he couldn’t have anticipated navigating two Draymond Green suspensions.

Nevertheless, it’s fair to wonder if his often-in-flux rotations throughout 2023-24 made it difficult for the team to find a consistent rhythm.

The Warriors began the season with last season’s starting center, Kevon Looney, in that role. When that didn’t go as well as it had in the past, and shortly after Kuminga publicly “lost faith” in Kerr, he found his way to a smaller frontcourt with Green and Kuminga. Eventually, rookie big man Jackson-Davis made his way into the role, and he looked completely overwhelmed in Tuesday’s loss to Sacramento.

Much ado was made about Thompson’s move to the bench earlier in the season. That seemed to go well, at least after the 34-year-old adjusted, but Kerr eventually abandoned that move, too.

And a common thread for much of the last few seasons, he probably could have played Moses Moody a little more than he did.

Again, Kerr deserves loads of credit for winning four titles and completely overhauling the culture of this organization, but he’s also overseen this stretch in which the team has missed the postseason in three of the last five years.

When you really think about the fact that the trio of Curry, Green and Thompson won its first championship together in 2015, this year’s result shouldn’t be all that surprising.

Klay is 34 and has both a torn ACL and Achilles in his history. At times this season, including when he went 0-of-10 from the field against Sacramento on Tuesday, he looked like a shell of the Splash Brother who helped Golden State win four championships.

Time also made the roster more expensive and more difficult to supplement on the fringes. Winning at the highest level often leads to big contracts. The Warriors had to sign several. That led to big luxury-tax payments and the team often being limited to minimums and salary-cap exceptions for adding players.

Even Curry hasn’t been spared the ravages of NBA aging.

In the mid-2010s, he was a perennial MVP and “best player in the league” candidate. And having a player at that level almost always leads to title contention.

He outperformed most players in league history in their age-35 season, but he’s no longer among the very best in the NBA. He’s probably in the top 10-15 range, and that kind of player needs a better, and probably younger, supporting cast to compete at the highest level.

One player who doesn’t really have the excuse of natural aging is Andrew Wiggins.

He’s 29 and should be in the middle of his prime. He’s the team’s third-highest paid player and among the by-products of the Kevin Durant era (KD was moved in a sign-and-trade for D’Angelo Russell, who was later traded for Wiggins).

And in 2022, when the Warriors won the title, he looked like he might become the kind of star who might be able to keep the team’s window for contention open.

That postseason, he had a positive box plus/minus. Golden State was plus-9.0 points per 100 possessions when he was on the floor and minus-4.2 when he was off. And in the Finals, he was the team’s second-leading scorer behind Curry.

In the two regular seasons since then, Wiggins has a way-below-average box plus/minus. The team’s net rating is 2.1 points worse when he’s on the floor. And this season, his production plummeted to 13.2 points per game with a below-average three-point percentage.

His sudden transformation from a dynamic, two-way wing to a ho-hum floor spacer who floats in and out of games completely changed the makeup of the team. And having that player making nearly $30 million didn’t help either.

Nothing doomed this specific Warriors season quite like Draymond Green.

Of course, when he was available, he actually played quite well. Even if he may be a half step slower than he was five years ago, his defensive IQ, tenacity and experience made him one of the best and most versatile stoppers in the league.

His playmaking and three-point shot (he made 39.5 percent of his triples this season) made him a plus on the offensive end of the floor, too.

Unfortunately, his completely unpredictable behavior limited him to 55 appearances.

After choking Rudy Gobert in November, he was suspended for five games. Less than a month after that ban ended, he smacked Jusuf Nurkić in the head and earned himself an indefinite suspension that kept him out till mid-January.

In the 55 games he did play, Golden State went 33-22. Take out the two-minute appearance in which he choked Gobert, and the record is 33-21. That’s a 50-win pace, and that would’ve been enough to keep the Warriors out of the play-in tournament.

For whatever reason, even after 12 seasons in the NBA, multiple deep playoff runs and multiple suspensions, Green still can’t seem to manage his emotions well enough to be available for his team.

And in a conference as good and deep as this year’s West, that was enough to nudge the Warriors all the way down to 10th, where they would have to play an elimination game on the road. Anything can happen in that situation, and on Tuesday, Golden State was crushed.