The Warriors‘ hopes for becoming title contenders again depend on a full return to health by Klay Thompson, writes Wes Goldberg of The San Jose Mercury News. Management is hoping Thompson can return by Christmas Day after missing the last two seasons with a torn left ACL and then a torn right Achilles tendon.
“With a healthy Klay Thompson, I think we’re right there with everybody,” general manager Bob Myers said. “But I don’t know when, or how, I expect him to come back healthy. I don’t want to put any pressure on the date because it’s not going to be at the start of the season. It’s not going to be the first game.”
Thompson was among the best players in the league before the injuries hit, with five straight All-Star Game appearances and five straight trips to the NBA Finals. During an Instagram broadcast in June, he acknowledged the risks of trying to return too soon.
“I also have to factor in my left knee,” Thompson said, “because I don’t want to come back and be half myself.”
There’s more on the Warriors:
- Jonathan Kuminga is ready to pursue the NBA dream that drove him to leave the Congo at age 13, per Connor Letourneau of The San Francisco Chronicle. Kuminga’s latest step was the Las Vegas Summer League, where he flashed some of the potential that caused the Warriors to scoop him up with the No. 7 pick. “I think he’s going to be one of the best two-way players from this draft class,” said Brian Shaw, who coached Kuminga with the G League Ignite last season. “He has all the tools you’re looking for, and he’s only 18.”
- Golden State has a roster spot left to fill, but Myers warns that the luxury tax implications of using the taxpayer mid-level exception could force the team to start the season with 14 players, relays Alex Didion of NBC Sports Bay Area. “I don’t think we use it,” Myers said on a recent radio interview. “I think we tried, we put it out there for some players we thought were difference-makers. But it’s not wise, and I would almost protect (owner Joe Lacob) from himself if he said go spend it on anyone. It does cost us about $25 million to spend the $5 million, which again I laugh, I know listeners or fans don’t care about that part, but we have to.”
- In case you missed it, the Warriors are rumored to be one of the teams interested in free agent forward Paul Millsap, who has spent the past four seasons with the Nuggets.
Fire bob myers, fire bob myers, fire bob myers
Lol I’d love to see any team do better when 65%(2019-2020) of your cap isn’t playing and when 30% is out doing better than making a playin/making what would’ve been an 8 seed in any other season in NBA history.
Their Number 1 problem wasn’t that they didn’t have Beal. It was that as soon as Steph/Baze/Wigs/Dray/Loon(a top 10 lineup in the NBA) cannot play 48 minutes, and when you have an 8 man rotation, Poole/JTA/Mulder as your ONLY bench players due to Lee/Wiseman/Chriss/Oubre injuries, yore screwed. That’s why we lost to Memphis and the Lakers.
Now, we have NBA level players that makeup an entire 2nd unit. They upgraded everywhere. Iggy>Wanamaker, Bjelicia>Paschall, Porter>Oubre, and eventually, Klay>Bazemore.
Steph/Wigs/Porter/Dray/Loon
Iggy/Poole/JTA/Bjelicia/Wiseman
Lee/GP2/Moody/Kuminga is MUCH MUCH MUCH deeper than last year. There’s 14 guys you wouldn’t mind playing 10 minutes, and they haven’t been able to say that since Steph, Boogie, KD and Klay got hurt.
Trading that depth for Beal/Ben/Siakam/etc provides the EXACT SAME ISSUE AS LAST YEAR. Great starting lineup, Top 10 for sure, but at some point you need to give 13 minutes(if starters play 35) to bench guys, and it’s unlikely Beal gets them every FA ring chaser as he’s not KD.
They did really really well this off-season for the resources they had. It’s not like they missed out on a trade, there wasn’t a trade to be made! BEAL and SIAKAM and DAME ARE STILL ON THEIR TEAMS. There weren’t trades they got outbid on, THERE WERENT ANY TRADE THAT WOULDVE UPGRADED THE TEAM.
How you can’t see that is just amazing… Wiggins isn’t a 25ppg All Star, but he went from 17ppg/38% from 3 with Oubre/Wiseman isn’t the lineup to 22ppg/41% with Baze and Loon starting, and did the same for team Canada. He’s also in his first non COVID training camp/summer with the team, which means I’d bet on him being more comfortable in the system, especially with spacing/IQ from guys like Iggy/Bjelicia /Porter/Lee/Moody.
They improved with the resources they had. Sure I would’ve loved to get Batum, Patty Mills or Dennis Schroder, but it sounds like THEY CHOSE TO SIGN SOMEWHERE ELSE silly! Schroder chose an MLE from a team that just traded their starting PG for a big, and had Pritchard/Dunn/Smart at PG, not Steph Curry. Schroder wanted a spot where he could take the starting job, not lose a starting job come January and be a 6th man.
It’s nearly impossible to do much better than this front office has done. Like, anything different is like saying red is blue, wet is dry, space has oxygen and bears don’t have fur. Highest payroll in the league, $5m costs $25m in taxes, spent $84m on Kelly Oubre last year, took out a $250 million loan for a stadium that filled seats for months before a world stopping pandemic=not trying, who cares they spend more than anyone on their roster, they suck. Just silly.
If I think bob myers has done a great job building a contender with all the assets he was gifted durning the last 2 off seasons then more power to ya. Me personally thinks he has drafted poorly and was scared to pull the trigger on a trade to help our chances in the short term. I understand building for the future so we don’t go back to being the warriors of old once the core 3 starts to decline but when u have a chance at a chip you push all ur chips to the middle and go for it. Turning kd into Dlo was a good move tbh to keep the salary slot filled but everything since then has been questionable
Kuminga should be the starting 3. How long have I’ve been saying he’s the best 2way player in this draft. Shaw knows what I know. It’s called talent vision. See I watched him play. I watched all his tapes on internet. Was hoping Knicks would trade up for him. I don’t talk about a player unless I watched plenty of him. I’m not one of the geniuses on here. Like the HomerVision kids.
I told you GS was lucky to get Kuminga. The day he fell to them. The biggest HomerVision Warrior here never saw that. Yet he’s dissed him plenty of times here. Just like he dissed Wiseman last yr. So all of you get ready for Wiseman and Kuminga. To usher in the next generation of Warriors.
Kuminga will be a big star in the NBA. This year he looks like Green’s back up. But in 2022/23 season he will be starting for GSW. I have a feeling some team will be throwing big stars for him in a trade.
I don’t get it. Why does everyone want trade Kuminga, a decade before he will hit his prime, for an aging ‘Star’, who is well past their prime? You build teams around guys like Kuminga. You don’t get rid of them for peanuts.
I don’t want them to trade Kuminga but let’s face it if a top 10 player comes available his name will be brought up in trades. If Warriors need that 1 player to win a championship they might trade him to get a ring this year.
Does everyone know he’s only 18. Won’t be 19 till October 6. He’s a big 3. His body type is a thick SF. Think Paul George only thicker. He can start with Green and Wiseman. And they can move Wiggins to SG. Till Klay gets his mins back.
Poole looks like the starter until Thompson gets back. Poole can open up scoring for Curry since his shot is very good. GSW always bring along rookies very slowly so i doubt Kuminga will start even Wiseman is probably a bench back up many games.
Unless he shows insane progress there is no Fing way Kuminga starts games. Dude is still raw. He will be lucky if he gets time in every game they play. I like his potential a lot, but lets get real here dude is not one of the top 7 performers on the team at least for the first half. We will see how quickly he cleans up parts of his game and locks down a spot.
Your ‘talent vision’ isn’t that good. You give Marty McRae way to much credit.
Reading comprehension lol. Try it. He’s one of the biggest geniuses on here. He knows less than you do.
Preach Knickerbocker Al! I think people talking about bundling Wiseman and Kaminga as throw ins for any deal for Simmons are sipping on some Sizzurp. Wiseman is nothing but upside and Kaminga with Curry, Drey and Pool/Wiggins as his running mates is going to be beast mode all day long. Potential rookie of the year not because he’s the best (that honor goes to Jalen Green), but because he’ll have the best potential to flash inside the paint playing next to the most unguardable man on the planet, Steph Curry and the man with eyes behind his head Draymond Green.
Talent vision should be able to see that last year’s Knicks were a fluke
We saw you were a Cook …..
The day you know what knowledge means. You can talk me. Till then go away. Before I hurt your feelings
Knicks defense was good but lacked some good offensive players to make the next step. They did bring in some more offense in the off season. I still think they lack that one super star to make them a top 4 team in the east.
AL, quit sobbing into the mic and mute Marty. The post was awful and defensive.
You would probably like the Kuminga fluff piece, written to make a reader root for him. But I like him less now and can see why he slipped. I certainly don’t feel that after watching a highlight video… He looks like a smaller, quicker Giannis.
It says he had to leave home at 13… to a full-ride boarding school in Virginia. It says Congo was war-torn… but before he was born. Over and over, he seems very mature for his age and doesn’t connect with teens.
Pretty sure he is older than he claims… this won’t matter until he is older, but it does cut into the belief that he has the growth potential of an 18yo when he is really 21 or more.
Maybe you should do a bit more reading. Up until 2020, there were 70 rebel fighting in Congo. I think that kind of makes the country war torn after Kuminga was born.
Oh boy 70. You know Congo is a big place. It’s Africa; there’s going to be rebels fighting. But is it war-torn? IDK. What does the writer know besides what Kuminga says? I suspect the article was not intended for a sports section, but human-interest, where one must overcome something.
So that means he can’t play or won’t be an allstar. Another genius observation. Try again.
Marty is the biggest A —- e to me. If I ever saw him I would show what real men do. His opinion is less valued than yours. I don’t even get how he’s allowed to post here. Haven’t you been told to get real knowledge.
Never said he can’t play. I said he was a smaller, quicker Giannis.
Give him some time. Starting him might ruin his confidence. He’s younger than everyone in this draft class. He’d be a college freshman THIS YEAR. They ruined Wiseman’s confidence last year by starting him and he looked like a shell of himself not too long before his injury. Kuminga is good and he will be really good, but they gotta let him come along. 10-15 minutes a night until he earns more minutes. They’re 14 deep right now. Bjelicia>Paschall, Iggy>Wanamaker, Porter>Oubre, eventuality Klay>Bazemore.
Steph/Wigs/Porter/Dray/Loon
Iggy/Poole/JTA/Bjelicia/Wiseman
Lee/Payton/Moody/Kuminga
over
Steph/Baze/Wigs/Dray/Loon
Poole/JTA/Mulder.
We have the depth that will allow them to not expect the starting lineup to play 40 minutes in order to secure a win, so there will be nights Steph drops 50 and Kuminga gets the 4th quarter to himself. He’s got a huge ceiling, but they can’t ruin him by letting media/on court performance ruin his 18yo confidence. He was supposed to be a HS senior last season. Iggy is big to help him adjust to the pro’s, but they also want to win and in order to let him grow, they gotta let him make mistakes that won’t have an entire fan base crash down on him for a late turnover.
“It does cost us about $25 million to spend the $5 million, which again I laugh, I know listeners or fans don’t care about that part, but we have to.”
Thing is, they don’t have to. They are supposed to spend every cent they can to get a ring, profit comes from so many avenues that $30M to the billionaires literally doesn’t matter.
They would obviously have no problem spending that money, but you name me a player that’s worth the 5M MLE. There is none. They tried for Mills & Batum and whoever else but it didn’t work out.
You read that quote, copied and pasted it and still don’t understand that Bob Myers was predicating his statement towards fans such as yourself. Do you think Joe Lacob became a billionaire by making decisions like the one you’re proposing, a $25 million investment on a role player at best. One could say a smart GM would have navigated the salary cap better and not put the team in a tough situation. That leads me to Rob & Jeanie, who don’t give a dunk about the cap and deserve some praise for going all in.
Did you even read what you wrote? The Warriors team salary is than the Lakers. It has been been that way for quite a few years; it will be that way for a few more. The core of the Lakers, at best, lasts 3 years. The Warriors are building a new core that can last the entire decade.
Why use the money just because its there? There is nothing on the market worth the midlevel, except possibly Patrick Beverly should he become available. Millsap, Avery Bradley, Rondo can all hop on the Dub train for the vet’s minimum, other than that I’m holding that MLE for someone that moves the needle
because the Warriors have a short window with Curry before they go back to being the Golden State Warriors
There are no players left on the current market who will get a MLE from any team except Markanen. His QO is higher than the MLE though. Why would you give a MLE to a guy thats looking for a vet min and pay 35M with the tax for no reason?
Now the MLE allows them to offer more midseason to buy out targets then the vet min to entice them. It also allows them to sign a pop up player to a multi year deal. Like if Jessup popped on a two way you could sign him for 3 years at rookie scale with a part of the MLE. Its still there. You just are out of targets now!
When you have a real shot at a ring. Money should never be an issue for an owner. Warriors injuries have set them back and has made the cap even worse. Still their window is now 2-4 yrs. Gotta go for it. Every owner should.
At this point, I think it’s likely Millsap will sign somewhere for the vet’s minimum. Even the teams that have the MLE available are worried about luxury tax implications.
Not all NBA owners are billionaires and true sportsmen. For example, hedge fund team owners still think of profit first. Their mentality is firm & it’s pay for the top talent and then everyone else, minimum contracts, can do the rest. Won’t work in winning a NBA title but it works in business.
Dynastic runs can and will wear players out leading to increased chance of injuries. Boston’s last championship of the 60s there was 1 less playoff series. Their 1st one of the 60s there were 7 fewer reg season games and 2 fewer playoff series. Warriors 5 year run may be the limit in the modern game.
Millsap would be a good addition to team. He’s only going to get minimum. He’s at end of rotation. Chriss is also a guy the should resign. He was playing well before he got hurt.
Make sure you get the right MILLSAP !!
RONNIE plays terrible !!