The Warriors think they have time. Time to “figure this thing out,” as Steph Curry said last week. Time to make that big trade that will turn the Warriors into a true playoff team.
. Time to decide if Jonathan Kuminga is or isn’t the future of this franchise. Time to tread water at .
500, outside of even the play-in tournament, despite a 12-3 start to the season. And yet time is the one thing the Warriors surely lack. For the last few years, the Warriors have operated in wait-and-see mode.
Blessed by having Curry in his prime (or at least on the early decline) the Dubs have been able to sweat the small stuff of the NBA — luxury tax avoidance, draft-pick management, two-way contracts, founding a women’s team. While that stuff is all well and good, they never seemed to get around to finding Curry a true No. 2 — the kind of player necessary to compete.
The time to do it is running out. Curry, the 11th oldest active player in the league, will turn 37 in less than two months, and Draymond Green is 43 days away from his 35th birthday with some seriously tough miles on the odometer. The Warriors will have to decide in six months whether to give Kuminga a long-term deal, and the NBA’s trade deadline—the Warriors’ last opportunity to make a major move this season— is 18 days away.
Eighteen days. That’s all the time the Warriors have left. And what do they have to show for all that time wasted? A .
500 record? A vague sense of Kuminga’s upside — a byproduct of a .