The Warriors’ quiet offseason has become impossible to ignore, and the numbers tell the story fast: Golden State is the only team that hasn’t signed a player who was on another roster last season.
That leaves 12 of the 13 players on standard contracts as holdovers from last year, with rookie first-round pick Yaxel Lendeborg the lone newcomer. It fits the picture NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole recently described, using the phrase “gap year” to explain what GM Mike Dunleavy appears to be selling to the fanbase: keep the books clean, hold onto draft assets, and aim for a bigger swing next summer.
The part that gets buried, though, is that this isn’t exactly new territory for Golden State.
The Warriors have been living through versions of the gap-year approach for much of the last eight seasons.
Back in 2019-20, the label made easy sense. Golden State had just come off five straight NBA Finals trips, but the season opened with the team knowing it was not a real title run.
Klay Thompson was sidelined for the year, and the Warriors had already salary-dumped Andre Iguodala and a first-round pick to bring in D’Angelo Russell in the Kevin Durant sign-and-trade. Fans understood that more help would eventually be needed to cover the losses of Thompson, Durant and Iguodala, but the expectation was that Joe Lacob and Bob Myers were waiting on Thompson’s return before going all-in again.
Then Stephen Curry’s major injury four games into the season changed everything. The Warriors sank to the bottom of the league, and 2019-20 became the purest version of a gap year you could draw up.
The next offseason brought another crossroads when Thompson suffered a season-ending injury. Lacob and Myers had to decide whether to sit tight again or try to push forward without him.
They leaned toward the latter, drafting James Wiseman and sending out little to get Kelly Oubre Jr. Curry produced what was arguably the best season of his career, but the supporting cast wasn’t close to enough.
Golden State missed the playoffs.
Before Thompson came back in January 2022, the Warriors were already rolling. Jordan Poole had broken out in his third season, Otto Porter Jr. and Gary Payton II made a major impact after arriving in the offseason, and Kevon Looney flourished as a full-time starter. Andrew Wiggins made his first All-Star team and was playing the best defense of his career.
At that point, it was still fair to wonder whether the franchise was keeping one eye on the future, with three lottery picks on the roster - Wiseman, Kuminga and Moody - and nearly all of its future first-rounders spoken for. But the team was good enough to win anyway.
That title run came despite the Warriors accepting a lesser version of themselves the following season, when they let Porter and Payton leave in free agency and leaned into development minutes for their younger players. The “two timelines” idea was being tested in real time.
It didn’t work. Wiseman was traded for an injured Payton at the deadline, and Golden State finished sixth in the Western Conference.
The minutes tell their own story. Wiseman, Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody and Patrick Baldwin Jr. combined for more than 2,000. Their net ratings were minus-22.8 for Wiseman, minus-15.2 for Baldwin, minus-5.0 for Kuminga and minus-2.0 for Moody, according to Cleaning the Glass.
The 2022-23 season had some of the same ingredients, but with a different result. The Warriors put real emphasis on developing Kuminga, Moody and Brandin Podziemski, yet those three were among the seven players with positive net ratings, so playing them wasn’t a drag on the team’s chances.
The issue was that the Chris Paul experiment wasn’t strong enough, and the Warriors should have turned him, plus picks and younger pieces, into a star. Instead, they stood pat at the trade deadline and then lost Paul for nothing in the offseason.
Another missed opportunity came, reportedly, when the team wasn’t willing to move Kuminga in a package for Pascal Siakam. That’s the same old tension again: the future getting priority over Curry, which is about as gap-year as it gets.
Golden State’s most recent serious push came after the Jimmy Butler trade in February 2025. From that point until Butler’s injury in January 2026, the Warriors were not operating like a team taking its foot off the gas.
It worked. They had their best stretch since the 2021-22 season and reached the second round, with a real argument that they could have gone farther if Curry hadn’t gotten hurt.
But once Butler went down in 2026, the organization faced another choice. It could have chased contention by dealing multiple first-round picks and Kuminga for another star. Instead, it moved Kuminga for Kristaps Porzingis, kept its future picks, and sent Curry a pretty clear message about where the priority sat.
That decision led straight into this summer, where the front office had chances to at least give Curry a better hand to play. Those options all would have cost future first-round capital. Golden State passed on them, choosing to preserve a path to max cap space in 2027 free agency while asking Curry to carry an underbuilt roster through his age-38 season.
That’s the part that makes this version of a gap year feel so strange. It’s rare enough for a team to be built around a player who is 38 or older. It’s even stranger to ask that player to sit through a season of patience and wait for the front office’s preferred window to reopen.
Given how often top-level starters are extending instead of reaching free agency, the plan comes with obvious flaws. And for the Warriors, it’s not really a new gamble anyway. It’s just the latest chapter in a long-running habit.
In Other News...
Warriors Still Need Help And One Free Agent Question Looms
The Warriors still have two roster spots to fill, and the need for another body is more than just paperwork with Stephen Curry carrying the offense and Jimmy Butler sidelined by injury. That has pushed Golden State toward the open market, where the list of available names is shorter than it used to be but still includes a few recognizable veterans who could theoretically help right away.
DeMar DeRozan, Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook are among the former All-Stars still sitting in free agency, which at least gives the Warriors options to ponder as they weigh fit, health and cost. Beal is the most complicated of the group, since his recent form and the uncertainty around what he has left after hip surgery make any move a tougher call, and the bigger question for Golden State may be whether one of these names is truly the right answer or just the most obvious one. [Read more 🡒]
Monta Ellis Just Reopened A Warriors Debate Fans Know Well
Monta Ellis is back in the conversation around the Warriors for reasons that go beyond nostalgia. Now the general manager for Alcorn States basketball program, Ellis recently looked back on his seven seasons in Golden State and revisited one of the franchises most familiar what-ifs: what might have happened if he and Stephen Curry had stayed together in the same backcourt.
Ellis said he believes he could have won championships with the same team as Curry, a view that taps directly into a debate Warriors fans have never fully stopped having. He also took time to reflect on his own career accomplishments and the clear differences between his style of play and Currys, a reminder that the early-2010s Warriors were built around a crossroads that still invites second-guessing. [Read more 🡒]
Warriors May Regret Passing On A Guard They Clearly Needed
The Warriors had at least a passing look at Collin Sexton, a guard who could have helped with ball-handling and playmaking, but they ultimately went in a different direction this summer. Instead of continuing to chase Sexton, Golden State chose to bring back DeAnthony Melton, a move that kept a familiar piece in place while leaving the rosters need for another creator as much of a talking point as ever.
Sexton is now headed to the Lakers on a two-year deal, and the fit there comes with its own questions because of the crowded backcourt around him. From the Warriors perspective, the lingering issue is whether passing on a guard with Sextons attack-minded skill set will look like a sensible pivot or a missed chance when the season starts to expose where the extra handling and shot creation might have fit best. [Read more 🡒]