When you’ve been in the playoffs, playing “meaningful basketball” as often as the Warriors have, you’re bound to repeat history.
So, as the Warriors were run off the floor Wednesday, marking a sad, inglorious end to the 2024-25 season, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Game 6 of the 2023 Western Conference semifinals.
In that second-round series, like this one, the Warriors came in gassed and undermanned after playing a stressful and, frankly, unnecessary seven-game series.
The Warriors at least had the 2022 title to fall back upon back then.
What does the 2025 team have?
Merely the idea of a title that was never won, it seems.
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“I know we had a shot. I know we could have gone the distance,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said after the Warriors lost their fourth straight game to the Minnesota Timberwolves 121-110.
It’s great that the standard in San Francisco is sky high. In the season and a half that followed that 2023 playoff exit, it seemed as if the standard had dipped. Even if the Warriors locker room believed it itself (a point of debate, to be sure), the front office sure didn’t believe the Warriors had what it took to compete for the title.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That shifted at the NBA trade deadline this past February, when the Warriors acquired Jimmy Butler.
“Jimmy changed everything for us… You get to the final eight in the NBA, you’re one of the best teams,” Kerr said.
But the Warriors are nowhere near the top, and now that the Dubs are back in the business of belief, what else will do?
I ask in all honesty. Are Warriors fans willing to drop the idea that a title is all that matters for the Dubs?
Is the Warriors’ front office?
Because without a shift, the end, which these Dubs are unquestionably living through, will prove quite difficult to emotionally manage. Fear, loathing, and perhaps a bit of flailing can be expected.
Don’t get me wrong, there were certainly moments — perhaps even prolonged moments — this season where the Warriors looked like legitimate title contenders. But the truth is that regardless of how much belief you had in this team, Golden State might have just blown its best chance at title No. 5 for Steph Curry.
Yes, Game 3 of this second-round series was a downright microcosm of the larger picture for the Dubs.
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr reacts after a call by the referee during the first half of Game 5 of an NBA basketball second-round playoff series Minnesota Timberwolves, Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
That’s the game where the Warriors, who lost Curry midway through their Game 1 victory, gave Minnesota its best shot. Conceptually, had the Warriors won that game, Curry might have been able to return from his hamstring injury to play in a Game 6 on Sunday.
Instead, the Timberwolves pulled away late in Game 3 and received little resistance in the series’ final two games. Curry never even had a chance to give it a go.
To be fair, Minnesota was the better team, and you can’t help but think that they’re a bit 2022 Warriors-coded this season — a one-star operation with a surprising No. 2 and a defensive stalwart running through a blessed path of inferior competition or competition that’s in the infirmary. They are now four wins from the NBA Finals and another four from a title.
The Warriors ended their season 11 wins from such a fate.
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Wednesday was the 152nd playoff game in the 11 seasons Kerr has been the Warriors’ head coach — every one of those games involved Curry or Draymond Green. Even if the Warriors last won a title in 2022 (doesn’t that seem so long ago?) and have only won 11 playoff games since that famous Game 6 in Boston, Golden State has achieved a kind of longevity that should not be possible in the NBA.
As such, it’s fair to wonder what’s next for the Dubs.
We’ll have ample time to discuss every option – from Giannis Antetokounmpo to standing pat (Spencer, that is).
But what of the most likely option: another year of the same core, albeit with some different role players?
Core players that are going to be in their age-38, 36, and 36 seasons, it should be noted.
And if that core — Curry and Butler were injured, Green was ineffective — can’t get it done a year younger, what’s to say next year will change anything?
Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green (23) and Jonathan Kuminga (00) are in disbelief after Minnesota Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards (5) gets a foul call in 2nd quarter of Game 3 of the Western Conference Second Round NBA Playoffs at Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, May 10, 2025. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
“Injuries are a part of it. We’ve won championships when guys got hurt. You need a little luck, just because health is a huge part of it,” Green said. “We think we got the pieces to make another run at it. … We got one of the best ownership groups and front offices in the NBA, and they’ll do whatever is needed to help the team improve.”
It was the same mandate given after the 2023 second round.
The front office waited 20 months to make the kind of move that truly improved the team.
The Warriors don’t have that kind of time again.
And as the last two seasons’ ends have proved, they didn’t have it the last time around.
How many more shots at title five can Curry have as a true No. 1?