The last phase of the Warriors dynasty didn’t end with one dramatic collapse. It faded the way a lot of great runs do: the stars got older, the edges got softer, and the margin for error disappeared.
Stephen Curry was still Stephen Curry, but over the last four years Klay Thompson and Draymond Green were no longer able to paper over the cracks the way they once did. That mattered, because during Golden State’s peak, Bob Myers could survive plenty of roster mistakes on the margins.
The core was so strong that the flaws rarely showed through. As Thompson and Green declined, those flaws became harder to hide.
Thompson’s slide started with bad luck, not a slow leak. He tore his ACL in the 2019 Finals, then tore his Achilles in November 2020, leaving him out of NBA games for 941 days. When he finally came back in January 2022, the Warriors were 29-9 and in the middle of a title chase.
He gave them more than many expected after that kind of layoff, putting up 20.4 points per game. But the old Thompson was not all the way back.
The shooting numbers were down from his career standards, and the defense wasn’t close to where it had been. In the playoffs, his minus-17.8 net rating, per Cleaning the Glass, was the worst on the team among players with at least 100 minutes.
Even so, he still delivered in the moments that counted. He hit huge shots in Games 1 and 6 against the Grizzlies and Game 4 against the Celtics, and he was a major part of the championship run. But that title run should have made one thing clear to the front office: he was no longer a player who could be counted on for star-level impact every night.
Instead, Golden State leaned on him even more in 2022-23. The veterans around him had thinned out in free agency, and the younger group hadn’t developed enough to relieve the pressure on the old core. Thompson responded with a strong regular season and led the NBA in threes, but the workload caught up to him in the second round, when he shot just 34.3 percent against the Lakers.
By 2023-24, the signs were even harder to ignore. Thompson’s regular-season net rating dipped to a career-worst minus-4.5.
Maybe some of that was his own decline, maybe some of it was the team making life harder around him. Either way, Steve Kerr tried changing the mix by bringing him off the bench.
Thompson actually played better in that role, but it didn’t move the needle much in the standings.
His final game in a Warriors uniform was ugly: 0-of-10 in a play-in loss to the Kings. He later joined the Mavericks in a sign-and-trade in the summer of 2024.
Green’s decline came in a different shape. He was still highly impactful for a long stretch, and one of the clearest signs of how good he once was is that he finished in the top two of Warriors net rating in every playoffs from 2015 to 2019. He was still a force in the 2022 playoffs too, posting a plus-10.6 net rating.
But the drop-off began to show in the 2022-23 playoffs, when he finished with a minus-3.6 net rating, third-worst on the team among Warriors who played at least 50 minutes. The 2023-24 play-in game against the Kings was even rougher, with Green tying for the game-worst mark at minus-22.
He bounced back somewhat in the 2024-25 playoffs, where his net rating improved to plus-3.9. Even then, the numbers beneath the surface were ugly: his Offensive EPM was minus-3.6, per Dunks and Threes. Green had never posted a negative playoff EPM before 2022-23, but he finished that postseason at minus-0.4 and followed it with minus-1.2 in 2024-25.
By last season, he had produced his worst net rating and EPM since his rookie year. The decline was slower than Thompson’s, but it was real.
He lost some athleticism, which showed up in fewer blocks and steals, fewer fast-break assists, and fewer coast-to-coast layups in transition. His turnovers and shaky perimeter shooting became more damaging as the team’s room for error shrank.
Still, Green remained a major part of Golden State’s success deep into this stretch. From 2020-21 through 2024-25, he made four All-Defensive teams. He also had some huge playoff moments, including forcing an Alperen Sengun miss to clinch Game 4 against the Rockets and being a combined plus-101 in the Warriors’ six series-clinching wins since the 2022 first round.
Even so, by 2025-26, the wear and tear of age and the grind of battling bigger centers while anchoring small-ball lineups had caught up to him.
The question is whether Golden State should have acted before the decline fully hit. In January 2023, Tim Kawakami asked Joe Lacob whether Curry, Thompson and Green would remain Warriors as long as they wanted to be.
Lacob answered with a Bill Walsh line: "Bill Walsh, I think I’ve quoted him before, once said, ‘Better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late,’" Lacob said. "...
I want to keep those guys here. I want them to be here.
As long as they’re playing at a very high level, rest assured they will be here."
In practice, though, the timing never really lined up cleanly. It would have been unrealistic to trade Thompson while he was injured.
After the 2022 championship, Golden State was thinking about repeating with this group, not breaking it apart. Green’s four-year, $100 million deal in the summer of 2023 made him a difficult player to move, especially since he was still living up to it over the next two seasons.
And then there was the bigger obstacle: the emotional cost. Moving either one would have devastated fans, and Curry would have felt it too. But a more ruthless approach might have opened up more chances to contend while Curry was still in his prime window.
After the 2023 playoff loss to the Lakers, the Warriors could have explored dangling Thompson’s $43.2 million expiring contract, along with young players and picks, for a star. That said, the front office had other misses that may have mattered more: the James Wiseman pick, the Jonathan Kuminga pick, trading either of them before their value fell, or finding a deal using Chris Paul’s salary.
Thompson and Green will always be franchise legends. It’s hard to call it a mistake that Golden State didn’t ship them out in blockbuster deals before the decline. But their fading impact still played a major role in the end of the Warriors dynasty.
In Other News...
Warriors Jokic Dream Suddenly Feels Less Impossible
The Nuggets recent move with Peyton Watson did more than reshape their roster for the moment, it reopened a long-running conversation about how Denver plans to build around Nikola Jokic going forward. Anytime a franchise with a generational star makes a cost-saving or future-focused deal, the ripple effects are immediate, and in this case they have only added fuel to the idea that Jokics situation is worth watching beyond this season.
George Karl added another layer by questioning whether Denver is the kind of organization that can fully support a player of Jokics stature over the long haul. For Warriors fans, that matters because the next offseason keeps coming into view as a possible inflection point, with talk of Jokic eventually reaching free agency and the notion of him in Golden State no longer sounding quite as far-fetched as it once did. [Read more 🡒]
Warriors Just Raised The Stakes With Gui Santos
Gui Santos is staying with Golden State for the next step of his development, a choice that says plenty about how seriously the Warriors are taking his place in their plans. Instead of leaving for two upcoming World Cup qualifiers with Brazil, Santos and the organization are putting a premium on training camp and the kind of season prep that can help a young player turn a late-year surge into a real rotation spot.
That matters because Santos showed enough down the stretch last season to get the Warriors attention, and now the challenge is translating that momentum into a larger role in a crowded roster. Golden State has veteran experience and fresh additions in the mix, but Santos decision to stay put suggests the team sees a path for him to be more than a fringe contributor if he keeps building on what he flashed before. [Read more 🡒]
Warriors Suddenly Have Two Intriguing Young Options For Open Roster Spots
The Warriors search for depth at the bottom of the roster is starting to take shape, and it could get a little more interesting in the coming days. Golden State is reportedly planning to bring former Philadelphia 76ers wing Dalen Terry into camp on a training camp contract, giving the team another look at a young player while it sorts through the final spots on the roster. With two main openings still available, the front office appears willing to keep one eye on veteran stability and another on development.
There may also be a fresh opportunity to add more youth to the mix. A five-team trade involving the Washington Wizards has put Cam Whitmore and Julian Reese into the conversation as possible camp candidates, and both would fit the kind of low-risk, upside swing the Warriors have shown interest in before. For a team trying to balance immediate needs with long-term flexibility, those open roster spots could wind up being more competitive than they looked a few days ago. [Read more 🡒]