It has been quite an eventful week since free agency started in the NBA and we can already see the balance of power shifting across the entire league. The Los Angeles Lakers boosted their chances of becoming a championship contender by adding four-time MVP LeBron James and surrounding him with a couple of intriguing veterans.
With one decision, James sucked much of the power from the East and transferred it to the super-stacked Western Conference.
A few other notable players changed teams as well but many others stayed with their respective squads. One other big-time All-Star who didn’t stay put was DeMarcus Cousins, who signed a one-year $5.3 million contract with the reigning champion Golden State Warriors. By doing so, Cousins pretty much ensured that the Warriors will win the title again next season. But what about the following year when the decade comes to a close? If the Warriors can keep their core intact, chances are, they’ll be heavily favored again to take home the Larry O’Brien trophy.
Or are they?
The 2018-19 Season
The upcoming season feels like the championship is already in the bag for the Warriors who have once again shocked the entire league with a huge free agent acquisition for the second time in three years. By taking on a low-risk/high-reward free agent in Cousins, they put the entire league on notice that they are not yet done dominating this decade. More on him later.
Aside from Cousins, the Warriors also added Jacob Evans III from the draft and will sign Jonas Jerebko to a contract after clearing waivers. Though he was used sparingly in the playoffs by the streaking Utah Jazz, Jerebko hit 41.4 percent of his threes, many of them by setting up from the corner. The 6-foot-10 forward is big enough to attack smaller players inside or draw opposing big men away from the paint by spotting up and shooting the rock from beyond the arc.
Forward Jonas Jerebko plans to sign with the Golden State Warriors upon clearing waivers on Monday, league sources tell ESPN. Jerebko has a $4.2M salary that would need to be guaranteed if he's claimed.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 7, 2018
By adding Cousins and Jerebko, the Warriors have ensured that they have a better set of big men than last season after losing JaVale McGee to the Los Angeles Lakers and Zaza Pachulia to the Detroit Pistons. They can go big when necessary without being at a disadvantage and they can go small which has been their calling card for winning the championship three of the last four years.
The Warriors continue to boast the best collection of players suited for the positionless basketball that they made popular throughout the league the past few years.
Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are the best shooting backcourt in the league and will continue to be so for as long as the Warriors can keep them together. These two can light up the scoreboard at any given time. Stop one and you still have another shooter who can kill you from deep.
Kevin Durant and Draymond Green are quite possibly the best combination of defenders at the small forward and the power forward positions in the league. Of course, Durant doubles as one of the most lethal offensive forces in the history of the game. After two seasons, other teams have discovered that the only way to stop this duo is to let them stop themselves.
Durant struggled at times in the playoffs and that’s when teams were able to take advantage of the Warriors. Green is the team’s key defensive cog and the reason why teams have a difficult time scoring against them. Remove Green and the Warriors’ defense allows teams free rein to almost score at will.
Mostly, the only chance the rest of the league has against these Warriors is if they beat themselves when they lose focus and let their emotions get the best of them. The Houston Rockets have also shown that great individual defense on each of the core members of the team can help derail Golden State’s superiority on offense.
But that’s easier said than done. The Warriors are as close to impossible to beat as any team in the league’s history. Last season, the team lost more games than at any time during its run to the championship the past few years. Much of that is the result of Curry, Thompson, Durant and Green missing time on the floor due to injuries. At other times, it was just the Warriors not being motivated enough because it wasn’t the playoffs yet.
Either way, Golden State can flip the switch on any given night and leave teams in the dust whenever they want to.
The 2018-19 championship is the Warriors to lose and the addition of Cousins, no matter at which point in the season he returns, will only make them more formidable.
Cousins’ Injury
Cousins is recovering from an Achilles injury that sidelined him last January and dashed the hopes of the New Orleans Pelicans of advancing further in the 2018 playoffs. Among the many players who have gone through an Achilles injury, the only clear success story belongs to Atlanta Hawks legend Dominique Wilkins. Wilkins was an All-Star two times after coming back from the injury and played seven seasons more. This was way back in the early 1990’s.
But even if he returns at only half his best, Cousins poses a threat that no other Warriors big man has ever been during their dynastic run to the title in the last four seasons. The 6-foot-11 center averaged 25.2 points, 12.9 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.6 blocks per game last season before the injury. The New Orleans Pelicans missed his presence in the playoffs where he could have given the Warriors another wide body to contend with in the paint aside from MVP-candidate Anthony Davis.
Now, it’s the Warriors who have Cousins and he’s on a team where he can take his time in getting back into shape since the team is more than capable of fending for itself without him before the playoffs. The timetable for his return is between December to January but don’t expect him to play heavy minutes until February or March.
When the playoffs start, I fully expect the Warriors to run roughshod over any every team that gets in their way all the way to the Finals where it should be a cakewalk compared to going up against the West’s best.
2019-20 Season
The Warriors will have to deal with Thompson’s impending free agency in the summer of 2019. He has said all the right things the past year about wanting to keep winning and sacrificing money on the table to continue raking in championship rings.
“We’re talking like 24 months away,” Thompson said during training camp last year, according to Mark Medina of The Mercury News. “But it’s something that definitely crossed my mind, especially when you see guys like Kevin (Durant) doing it.”
“We all make a ton of money,” Thompson added. “But you want to look back on your career and leave a legacy, especially as a winner and impacting your community,” Thompson said. “I don’t want to be known as a basketball player. I want to be known as a champion and who did great things in the Bay Area.”
For the Warriors to win the last championship of this decade, Thompson has to be on board and that entails ensuring that they can keep him while staying within what is financially feasible for them to continue fielding in a competitive team. Warriors owner Joe Lacob appears to be willing to spend in order to win and that is the key factor in keeping the team’s core intact.
Other than the core players, Andre Iguodala is the team’s next most indispensable player. When he was not on the roster in the playoffs, the Warriors struggled mightily against the Rockets and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Western Conference Finals and the Finals, respectively. They will have to keep Iguodala in the lineup, healthy, ready and hungry for another shot at another ring. He, too, will have to be taken care of financially as well.
As for the rest of the team, Cousins will definitely be gone as he is a rental that Golden State can only afford this season. By next season, he will be joining his fourth team in the last three years unless he returns to any one of his previous two teams, the Pelicans or the Sacramento Kings.
But make no mistake about it. Inasmuch as the 2019-20 season is still within the Warriors’ grasp, teams like the Lakers, Rockets, Boston Celtics, San Antonio Spurs and Philadelphia 76ers will be even better by this time.
The key for the Bay Area Squad is to keep their core together without getting bored with winning. Everyone knows that the only way that the Warriors can be beat is by seeing them implode. If they can keep their egalitarian culture going strong for the next few years, the Warriors will be the favorites to win championships, not just for the next two years, but also for the next half decade.
The 2019-20 season will surely test the Warriors much more than in their previous title runs. Even so, it’s almost unthinkable that any team will have caught up to them by this time.
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