SACRAMENTO — The Golden State Warriors got blitzed by a bigger, tougher, younger and quicker opponent that outshot and outworked them. Then, to make matters worse, they tried to have it both ways.
If any team has earned the right to be proud and defiant in defeat, it’s the Warriors, who have won four NBA championships and reached six Finals since 2015 with Steve Kerr as coach and Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson as an unbreakable core trio. Predictably, Golden State’s key figures chose to cling to each other after a season-ending 118-94 play-in tournament loss to the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday, a humbling blowout that sent the team into an uncertain offseason before the real playoffs even started.
Kerr said he wanted Thompson, who is headed for unrestricted free agency after extension talks failed to produce a deal last summer, to return next season. Green noted Warriors ownership had signed Thompson to a lucrative contract shortly after he suffered a torn ACL during the 2019 Finals, and he said he expected his teammate to be financially taken care of again. Curry, whose opinion counts most of all, made it clear he wasn’t ready for the trio to break up after 12 years together.
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“I can never see myself not with those two guys,” Curry said of Green and Thompson. “I understand this league changes and there’s so many things that go into it. We’re not going to play forever. We’ve experienced so much together. At the end of the day, I know they want to win and I want to win. That’s all I’m worried about.”
Kerr also insisted that Golden State, which won the 2022 title but has now missed the playoffs in three of the past five seasons, can still contend for championships because Curry, Green and Thompson are “all still really damn good players.” That was the moment the Warriors started to sound too lost in the memories of their past glory, too detached from a volatile present that ended with an old-fashioned whooping delivered by their kid brothers.
Indeed, the Kings — who advanced to face the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night for the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference — exposed so many flaws in 48 minutes that they forced the Warriors to reckon with their arrival at a crossroads of loyalty or hope: If the Warriors want to keep the band together, they can kiss a fifth championship in this era goodbye.
Curry, who scored 50 points in Game 7 to eliminate the Kings from last year’s playoffs, struggled to free himself from Keon Ellis and Sacramento’s swarming defense. Green, the best defender of his generation, couldn’t hold the middle against the Kings, who got whatever they wanted during a 37-point onslaught in the third quarter. And Thompson, who splashed jumpers with ease for more than a decade, missed all 10 of his shot attempts to finish scoreless. The five-time all-star buried his chin in his chest as he checked out in garbage time, a demoralizing end to a challenging season that saw him benched multiple times.
The Warriors’ pile of shortcomings was tall: too many turnovers, too many undersized rotation players, too many unclaimed defensive rebounds and too many wide-open three-pointers for the Kings. De’Aaron Fox walked into easy midrange jumpers, Keegan Murray feasted on Golden State’s weak perimeter defense, and Domantas Sabonis got revenge for Green stomping on his chest in last year’s playoffs.
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Sacramento’s fans, so accustomed to being rolled by their Northern California rivals, shook their cowbells with glee as the margin kept growing in the fourth quarter. Green had shouted profanities and flipped off the Golden 1 Center crowd during last year’s heated moments; this time, he blew kisses to a pair of hecklers and offered congratulatory hugs to the Kings’ players and coaches.
Green was beaten soundly, yet he still argued Golden State could have avoided the play-in tournament if it had taken better care of big leads during the regular season. Left unsaid: The Warriors also would have been in better position if Green hadn’t been suspended multiple times this season for violent acts toward opponents. Of course, there was another significant hurdle — the death of assistant coach Dejan Milojevic at a team dinner in January — that was beyond anyone’s control.
But this Warriors season will be remembered for how far they were from contention, not by perceived near misses. Golden State lived “woulda, coulda, shoulda” campaigns when it blew a 3-1 lead in the 2016 Finals and lost Kevin Durant and Thompson to major injuries during the 2019 Finals. This year was April embarrassment, not June gloom.
“It’s raw right now,” Curry said. “Just sitting here, figuring out if I want to watch the playoffs or not. On April 16, this is unfamiliar territory.”
Kerr juggled his lineups all season, searching for possible solutions in every nook and cranny. Even so, the Warriors beat out just five teams in the Western Conference and probably won’t have their first-round draft pick to show for it because they must convey it to the Portland Trail Blazers unless it lands among the top four selections. Meanwhile, Golden State had the NBA’s highest payroll and largest luxury tax bill — an unsustainably expensive proposition for virtually every other organization in the league, especially given its lack of results.
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Surely, cuts must come. Besides pure sentimentality, what sense is there in recommitting to a broken and outrageously expensive roster?
Thompson, 34, just completed a five-year, $189.9 million contract, and his earning power will be compromised by his advancing age and injury history. Andrew Wiggins turned in another perplexing season and is owed nearly $85 million over the next three years, making him an attractive trade piece if Golden State can find any takers. And guard Chris Paul holds a non-guaranteed contract worth $30 million next season, meaning he could be waived before free agency if the Warriors decide to pare back on spending.
Time and again, as the Warriors processed their anticlimactic finale, their hearts came into conflict with their minds. Loyalty or hope — it can’t be both.
“This is life,” Kerr said. “This is how it works. You don’t get to stay on top forever.”
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