With the Golden State Warriors 15-15 after 30 games following their Christmas Day loss to the Denver Nuggets, a question must be asked: What is the future of this team if it can't win the Steph Curry minutes?
Before online discourse hyper-nuanced everything, players were judged off whether or not their teams won. Then, in an era of player empowerment just as much among fans as in the league, the conversation became how the player wasn't responsible for a loss if his individual stats were great.
But with Curry, there's a trend developing that has to be addressed one way or another.
Curry struggled Monday versus the Nuggets in Denver, going 7-of-21 for 18 points with four assists to three turnovers.
The Warriors were -26 in his minutes. They were outscored by 26 points with Curry on the floor, an outrageous differential in a six-point game.
Single-game plus-minus is noisy; it's the product of runs, shooting variance, and lineup performance. But this was the 15th game out of the Warriors' 30 contests that the Warriors lost Curry's minutes.
For comparison, the Warriors had just 22 such games last year, and that was in a season considered a disappointment, with the Warriors eventually losing in the second round as the sixth seed. They had just 15 such games in 2022 when they won the title. At this pace, Curry would finish with the most games where the Warriors lost his minutes since his rookie season for the 26-win 2009-10 Warriors.
To be clear, this is a team stat. Curry, despite his struggles Monday versus the defending champs on the road, is averaging 28 points and 4.4 assists per game, shooting 42% from 3 on 11.5 3-point attempts per game. He remains the best shooter to ever play the game and has played great individually.
Which makes the team's performance with him even more concerning.
Curry hasn't just been the best shooter in the league, a two-time MVP, a Finals MVP two seasons ago, and a four-time champion. He's been arguably the most impactful offensive player in NBA history since Steve Kerr's arrival in the 2014-15 season. Since that season, the Warriors' offense has been 11.4 points better with Curry on the court than on the bench (not including the 2020 season when he played just five games).
The mere presence of Curry led his teams to be among the best in the league offensively. This led to him being the first player described by his "gravity" impact, where the attention he drew made other players on the floor with him better, even without him doing anything. Curry's mere presence made the offense elite.
This season, the Warriors offense with Curry on the floor averages 115 points per 100 possessions, which would rank 17th-best in the league. It's a point below where the Warriors have been since 2015, which doesn't sound like a huge drop, but that's in relation to a league average that's skyrocketed. Offenses are better than ever … except for the Warriors when Curry is on the floor.
This season, the Warriors' offense is only two points better with Curry on the floor versus on the bench, which reflects the bench improving with historical trends of this "juiced" offensive era, and the Curry minutes not following suit. Meanwhile, the Warriors' defense is 10 points worse with Curry on the floor. The Warriors' defense with Curry on-court would rank 23rd, worse than the Dallas Mavericks.
In total, the damage: The Warriors, through 30 games, have lost the Steph Curry minutes by 1.9 points per 100 possessions and 24 points total.
It's easy to look at these numbers and ascribe blame, but that's the wrong framework. Curry isn't the reason the defense has fallen off a cliff; Draymond Green, before his indefinite suspension, had a worse on-court defensive rating, for example. Curry isn't the reason the offense is mediocre when he's on the floor compared to his peers.
But to put this simply: If Curry is still as good as he has ever been — or near it — and the Warriors cannot win his minutes, then the Warriors are going nowhere, regardless of whose "fault" it is.
The easy scapegoat is Andrew Wiggins, whose first eight weeks of play were so disastrous it prompted Steve Kerr to bench him. The Warriors, for example, have a 122 offensive rating when Curry is on-court without Wiggins and beat opponents by 9 points per 100 possessions. Problem solved, right?
Except the Warriors have lost the Curry-Draymond Green minutes without Wiggins.
That's been the most reliable combo in the NBA over the last nine seasons, and it's no longer working. Green's presence has not held the defense up.
Now, the Curry-Green duo plus Klay Thompson has still been good without Wiggins. But the Warriors bench has been great, so it's hard to know if it's the bench players or just the removal of Wiggins. (Wiggins also led the Warriors in scoring Monday with 22 points and was a +18.)
All of these splits are small samples, even 30 games into the season. There's time for it to turn around. Golden State has found young players who are making meaningful contributions in Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis. It's possible everything will balance out by the time April comes around. The Warriors can attempt to track the 2012 Celtics, who made the conference finals with the aging remnants of the 2008 title team. That team was over the hill and past its prime but still good enough with enough veteran savvy to make a real run and eventually reach the conference finals before LeBron James ascended to God Mode in Game 6.
But the Warriors can have a great bench and promising young players, can get Draymond Green back, and can find more contributions from Moses Moody and Jonathan Kuminga, and none of it will matter if they can't solve their most present and important issue: They are losing the minutes with the best player in franchise history, one of the best players of all time, who is still individually playing at an elite level.
Rival executives have suggested they'll be interested to see if the Warriors elect to make major changes before the trade deadline. Does that mean a trade to break up the Big 3 of Curry, Green and Thompson? Does that mean moving on from Wiggins, who was so essential for their 2022 run? League sources aren't sure, but if things don't change quickly, they expect the always-aggressive ownership group to look for ways to give Curry a better chance at another title.
Maybe this isn't a personnel issue, though. Or, to put it more precisely, maybe this has more to do with the roster's inability to sing in Steve Kerr's system the way it once did. The Warriors, even with Curry, were a first-round out before Kerr showed up, and his approaches were crucial to their four titles and status as one of the best teams of all time. But sometimes, teams don't need to make the game sing. Sometimes they need a low guttural growl or a piercing scream or to drop some bars.
To extend the metaphor: Not everyone can play in the symphony. Curry might be able to lift a good symphony to a height that evokes tears. But this team sounds like a junior high band trying to play Bach. They might need a new voice who's not looking for the beautiful game, but just a way to put more points on the board than the opponent.
There's probably a middle ground to be found, a truth where Curry is still elite at what he does but his impact on others is less when Thompson is no longer the second-best shooter in the league, and the supporting cast is no longer as solid as it was in the Warriors' first three-title run with Curry. It is no longer as simple as "put Curry on the floor and watch the offense cook."
Golden State has to figure out how to be a better team that can optimize around Curry, because Curry may not be the kind of player that instantly makes any lineup he's on elite anymore, despite his own individual brilliance. Golden State has managed to stay .500 despite all this trouble. They can improve and become dangerous. But all of that starts with this: If the Warriors can't win the minutes when Steph is on the floor, nothing else matters.
Until that changes, they are no longer special, no longer magical, no longer elite. They're just another team with just another superstar with great stats in an era of great stats.
