Two nights before Jimmy Butler’s knee injury altered the course of the Golden State Warriors’ season earlier this month, Draymond Green walked the short path from the Bill King Interview Room down to the locker room inside Chase Center feeling great.
The 35-year-old had just played one of his best games of the season in a win over the Charlotte Hornets, scoring 20 points, dishing out six assists and grabbing three rebounds. Golden State had won 11 of its last 15 games and was playing its best basketball of the season.
Green had also heard the noise. He heard the chatter across social media and inside a rabid fanbase that wanted one more big swing. One more major trade. One more attempt at giving Green, and Warriors star Stephen Curry, one more chance at a fifth championship.
But that night, as Green weighed what he has built alongside Curry and former teammate Klay Thompson and the idea of making a trade that would have long-lasting ramifications and could harm the standard the proud trio set for so many years, Green offered an opinion that might surprise some of the team’s ardent supporters.
“We don’t get off into pressuring our front office, our ownership group, to risk the future for us to be successful right now,” Green told The Athletic. “Because that’s not how this was built. This was not built on risking everything in the future to be successful. So if we’ve created a blueprint, why get away from the blueprint now because everyone goes crazy?”
Four NBA championships have placed Green, Curry and Thompson in rarefied air. But as Green spoke that night, what seemed to matter just as much was the standard for players they believe they established — what it means to wear a Warriors jersey and what they hope the organization will look like long after they are gone.
“If you find me someone who won a championship every year of their NBA career and has gone at it as long as we have, then I’ll strive for that, but that’s not the case,” Green continued. “We are one — players, coaching staff, front office, ownership group — we are one. We’ve never been guys that’s just gonna go against the grain because we care about this organization.
“When you’ve built something the way we’ve built this thing up you don’t want to see it go to s— when you’re done. You didn’t leave it in a good place. We still want to leave this thing in a good place.”
At the time, Green understood what the fan base wanted and how the Warriors became the Warriors in the first place. If meaningful upgrades were going to cost multiple first-round draft picks and young players, it would hurt the chances the organization would have to succeed in the future, long after their current core is gone.
“We didn’t work this hard so that when we’re coming back to games five, 10 years from now the team is complete dogs—,” Green said. “That’s not why we built this thing up. We built this thing up so that this thing can go on for years and years and years and outlive us. And so with that being said, we’re never gonna be guys that go up there, talking to (the front office), telling them like, “Hey man, f— that, get rid of …” Nah, that’s not what it is.
“Give us good players, guys that can mesh with us, guys that work hard, guys that are proven in this league, and we gonna go do what it do. And we gonna go hold up our end of the bargain and make that work. As opposed to going and auctioning off and leveraging our future on a hope. … Because we’ve seen that over and over and over again and it didn’t work. So when you’ve laid a blueprint, you don’t go against that.”
Two nights later, everything changed.
Butler went down with a torn ACL in his right knee, a season-ending injury that extinguished everything they had been building since acquiring Butler before last season’s trade deadline. In that moment, the Warriors lost hope.
But in the days since Butler’s injury, there’s been a surprising renewed sense of optimism within the organization because Milwaukee has begun to listen to offers for Giannis Antetokounmpo, a longtime target of the Warriors, ahead of the Feb. 5 trade deadline.
Antetokounmpo’s name back in the conversation, even as a possibility, serves as the perfect tipping point between the question Green was initially posed: How do the Warriors balance what they have built and are still fighting for, against mortgaging all their assets for one more big piece — even if that means risking what may happen in the future?
Nine days after Butler’s injury, Curry finished his postgame workouts following a win over the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City, loaded a takeout plate of food to eat on the Warriors’ bus and prepared for the flight home from an emotionally draining four-game road trip.
Like Green, the 37-year-old superstar had heard the noise. He is well aware of the fervor within the fanbase to make a move. He had just finished a news conference where he didn’t mention any potential player by name, but offered a clearer window in how he views the approaching deadline than he had a few days earlier in Dallas, when he deflected a question about the future and said he didn’t want to discuss any “existential” moves.
When told about Green’s comment that he didn’t want the Warriors to be “dogs—” in the future because of potential moves for the present, Curry offered the counterpoint that the Warriors will weigh every day leading into the deadline.
“But we don’t want to suck right now either,” Curry told The Athletic. “There’s a balance for sure and that’s how we approach every conversation. I don’t know if it’s a perfect answer, but it’s how we approach everything in terms of the nature of me, Draymond, Steve (Kerr), Mike (Dunleavy Jr.), Joe (Lacob). But every trade deadline’s a little different, so who knows what can happen.”
The night after Butler got hurt, Dunleavy offered an honest assessment of what the Warriors would be willing to part with for the right player.
“I think if we’re talking about trading draft picks that will be going out when Steph isn’t here, it’s gonna have to be a player we think we’ll be getting back that is gonna be here when those picks are going out,” Dunleavy said. “And that player’s gonna have to be pretty impactful … if there’s a great player to be had we’ve got everything in the war chest that we would be willing to use.”
Antetokounmpo fits the description perfectly. In many ways, he is why the Warriors have held onto those picks at all. He has long been the organization’s white whale — the star who could team with Curry in the twilight of his career, inherit the mantle from Curry and lead the franchise into the next era. Antetokounmpo is the manifestation of the second timeline the Warriors have chased for years.
Steph Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo after a Jan. 7 game between the Warriors and Bucks. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
What makes this trade deadline different isn’t just that Antetokounmpo has appeared as a realistic possibility. It’s that Curry, who will turn 38 on March 14, is still playing at an elite level, averaging 27.3 points per game and performing like the kind of top-level championship-caliber player that can carry a team in the postseason.
Late Wednesday night in Utah, Curry didn’t mention the former MVP’s name. He didn’t have to. The question isn’t whether the Warriors are interested in Antetokounmpo, it’s whether Antetokounmpo is worth emptying the cupboard for. Is he enough to mortgage every pick, almost every young player the Warriors have, with no guarantee that his addition alone would make the Warriors much better than the team that hovered around .500 all season with a healthy Butler?
Green, for his part, knows that no matter what the Warriors decide to do, it will be a collaborative process within the key figureheads of the organization. Prior to Butler’s injury, Green saw and heard the chatter that if Dunleavy didn’t make a major move that both he and Curry would be upset.
“They said that two years ago. They said that three years ago. They said that four years ago,” Green said. “Here we are, still plugging away every day, trying to win at the highest level. That’s not who we are, we’re not someone to go crying about a roster, that’s not what we do. We trust our front office group because that’s the same group of guys, our ownership group, same group that helped us get there. So now all of a sudden you gonna turn and say, ‘Oh man, it’s your fault!’ That’s fingerpointing, that’s front-running, and we’re not front-runners here.”
A little more than a week after Butler went down, Curry was still processing not just Golden State’s reality, but the NBA landscape as a whole.
“I think honestly you figure it out in real time,” Curry said. “Because the same way we got to this point — there’s not a crystal ball that tells you what opportunities are on the horizon, how to maintain competitiveness with everything that goes on during an NBA season, injuries, all that type of stuff. But I do know there’s a level of — reasonability — in terms of moves, or options or opportunities that can help us stay competitive now but don’t handcuff the next five, seven years of our team. So everything that’s happened to date has been with that as the mindset.”
As Curry packed his dinner and started walking toward the loading dock, he continued his thought, offering another glimpse into the same gray area Green referenced before Antetokounmpo’s name had even come back to the forefront.
“We all know who’s on the block, apparently, according to today, does that mean that mortgaging the future for somebody like that wouldn’t be a conversation every team is having?” Curry continued. “Of course. We’re in that boat. Does it make sense or not? I’m not sure yet because I don’t know all the details, but you just have to have a level of reasonability on what’s a smart move. Like if I’m a GM I’m thinking in that way. Everybody has their input and then there’s a decision that’s made that kind of makes sense amongst everybody.”
What both Curry and Green are confident in is that no matter which direction the Warriors decide to go at the trade deadline, both men will do whatever they can to uphold the standard that they’ve set. They have each poured their professional livelihood into this organization and they believe in the principles that it was built upon. As Green stood in front of his locker on Jan. 17, he did so with a strong sense of belief in what he described.
Asked what happens if no move happens, Green didn’t wait for the question to finish.
“We’ve got a great team in this locker room,” Green said. “If a move is made, a move is made. But that’s not our job, that’s not our place to sit and wait or worry about if a move is gonna be made. … We’re not chasing anything but greatness. And you don’t chase greatness by whining about a roster. You chase greatness by embracing the roster that you have, getting the best out of every single guy, and that’s what we’ve done for years and that’s what we’re gonna continue to do.”
The Warriors are no longer deciding whether to chase greatness. They’ve already done that. Their decision at the trade deadline will determine how much longer the chase will go on for Curry and Green before their run together ends for good.
