It's still unclear who will be running the Golden State Warriors' front office this summer. Whether Bob Myers decides to stick around, Mike Dunleavy Jr. takes his place or someone else vaults to the top of the team's basketball operations department won't change the harshest reality of a pivotal offseason.
The Warriors' ability to restock the roster coffers for another championship run around their foundational core is largely limited to the trade market. Any big-name free agents are off the table. Even the second tier of available players are bound to be too expensive.
Golden State will be well over the “second apron” of luxury tax included in the new CBA, subject to major restrictions that include the loss of the taxpayer's mid-level exception. All the Warriors will have to offer outside free agents are minimum deals.
Donte DiVincenzo is good as gone unless he takes a significant discount to stay in the Bay. The Dubs can probably retain JaMychal Green with non-Bird rights, but that's a better indication of their severe spending limitations than anything he gave them this season. Ideally, Golden State would have a third true big who brings more all-around consistency or single-trait impact than Green does at this point of his career.
The Warriors could potentially get that player archetype in a Jordan Poole trade. Adding a dynamic ball handler behind Stephen Curry is probably more important if Golden State goes that route. But Poole's trade value is at an all-time low as a disastrous playoffs is preceded by his big-money contract extension kicking in next season.
The Warriors' return for Poole surely won't meet the ideal standards of talent, roster fit and luxury-tax savings. That's a dream world. Maybe just a role-playing, two-way forward with playoff experience should be Golden State's primary target in a Poole trade, then?
A reliable sixth man who isn't easily exploited on either end while playing varied roles next to Curry-led combinations of Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green and Kevon Looney could be the best the Dubs can do with their trade assets.
All of which preempts the biggest need Golden State must address in the 2023 NBA offseason.
Warriors' biggest need in 2023 offseason: Reliable playoff depth
The Warriors pretty much know what they're getting from their traditional starting five next season.
Thompson could stand to clean up his shot selection and play more for the pass. There's still optimism a healthy, available Wiggins can regain the form that made him such a force toward the end of last year's title run, too. He certainly flashed it throughout the first two rounds of these playoffs, keeping that light on from tipoff to finish of the Warriors' season-extending Game 5 win over the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round.
Far more questions among incumbent players exist beyond this team's veteran core.
Jonathan Kuminga is Golden State's heaviest non-Poole domino. If he commits to fighting on the glass and develops the mentality and nuance needed to thrive as a pick-and-roll partner with Curry, there's no reason why Kuminga won't be making good on his eye-opening regular season development this time next year.
Next season's Warriors reaching their ceiling includes Kuminga—checking multiple positions, making plays for himself and his teammates in the halfcourt and ripping and running in transition—seizing some crunch-time minutes in the 2024 playoffs. That possibility alone should make trading the 20-year-old so early into his career a non-starter, at least barring a return package that instantly takes the Dubs a rung up the hierarchy of championship contention.
Moses Moody almost seems like a sure thing for 2023-24 by now compared to Kuminga. The blend of poise and measured aggression he showed in the playoffs while being thrust into a regular role against the Lakers and Sacramento Kings is a pretty accurate approximation of what was expected of Moody over the 82-game grind.
Moody's next step is just building on what he did in the postseason: Higher volume from beyond the arc, even more attention to the little things and continued strides keeping the ball in front one-on-one.
Patrick Baldwin Jr. is the Dubs' dark horse. He's much more likely to carve out a regular-season role off the bench by spacing the floor, grabbing boards and playing sound team defense than see meaningful court time in the playoffs. Baldwin just doesn't have the lateral quickness to be anything other than a flaming-red target for opposing star ball handlers under that microscope.
Even Baldwin earning situational minutes versus second units, though, would be valuable for the Warriors next spring considering the lack of shooting ability and size that dogged them in the Western Conference Semifinals.
Golden State's title defense ended with the palpable thud of imminent personnel changes. Perhaps those still come in the form of cutting ties with Poole or, gulp, moving on from Kuminga amid some bubbling friction.
But providing Curry with a championship-caliber supporting cast is the Dubs' ultimate offseason goal either way, and that means finding the playoff-worthy depth that so starkly eluded them as 2022-23 came to a close—through the trade market and internal improvement of young players.
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