Does Steve Kerr deem this Warriors season a success?
His full answer pic.twitter.com/WDo47xj1lI
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) May 22, 2021
It’s hard to know exactly what to make of this Warriors season. It was simultaneously many things, and, in the end, not much at all. The Warriors ended up finishing almost exactly in the middle of the pack, which is sometimes the worst thing that you can do. They were never competitive enough to ever challenge as a bona fide playoff contender, nor were they terrible enough, like last season, to get another likely high lottery pick.
And thanks to the late-season run by the Minnesota Timberwolves, their other high draft pick might not be as high as they’d hoped either.
But for as much as this season leaves us scratching our heads, it provided perhaps Stephen Curry’s greatest season ever (which, uh, was clearly wasted), a resurgent Draymond Green, the best and most aggressive year of Andrew Wiggins’ career, a confident and tantalizing Jordan Poole, and Juan Toscano-Anderson locking himself in as part of the core.
The negatives, though, are the Warriors held onto Kelly Oubre Jr. at the trade deadline, and he might leave in free agency (which might be best for both sides). They got only the most abbreviated of looks at their now-20-year-old, No. 2 overall pick in James Wiseman, and while he flashed brilliance, he also looked his age, which doesn’t quite match up with Curry’s window.
So the Warriors have some very pressing decisions to make this offseason. When asked whether this season meant something, Curry shared that same sort of “ehh, sort of” perspective, that many things went right… and just as many went wrong.
“Yes and no,” Curry said. “I would love a playoff experience and seven-game series and see how we respond to that challenge, but we got two, I call it three playoff games – last game of the season, these last two play-in situations. It sucks because you’re like, ‘We’re down 1-2, let’s go on a run,’ but that’s not how it was drawn up in terms of the format.
“Now we have three months to rejuvenate, retool, come back next season, whatever that means. So these last few games, including the homestand have been pretty awesome in terms urgency and understanding who we are. I mean, we played eight guys for damn near 22 games. We left it all out there.”
Head coach Steve Kerr termed the season a success.
“I think this season was absolutely a success,” Kerr said. “We were really a good team over the last 22 games… To put together a stretch like that over an entire quarter of a season, that’s not a fluke. We were the number one defense in the league over that span. To watch Jordan, Juan, Mike Mulder, these young guys grow and develop, that makes this a successful season because of what it sets up for next year.”