An Era Ends as Warriors Go Out Sad to the Sixers, 113-94.

The Warriors reach a breaking point as one way or another, this team faces a sea change.

It’s difficult to pay attention to a game like this at this point in the season. Even for a normal team, this is the time of year when people are concerned more with what could be than what is – the actual playing of the game of basketball takes a backseat to scrolling and waiting for Shams to tell you what your team will look like tomorrow. Trade deadlines have gotten busier and busier, and the discourse surrounding player valuations and potential deals sucks up all the oxygen. This is the case no matter what your team is, whether your team is probably standing pat, is going to blow things up, or is looking to gamble on the next big thing. This is a lost week of basketball.

The Warriors as presently constructed are not a normal team, which makes the distraction factor even worse. With Steph Curry out for now and Jimmy Butler out for the foreseeable future, the Warriors need a miracle to beat any playoff bound team. So why would you even pay attention to a Tuesday night game against a playoff team?

If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re an addict and you have a problem. But for the vast majority of Warriors fans, casual or obsessive, there’s nothing that the on-court product can do that compares to dreaming up the next iteration of this team, cataloging rumors, waiting for them to choose a direction, waxing nostalgic about an era that is rapidly reaching its close.

Draymond Green holding court post-game rubbed this sense of finality in. After a tough home loss, the questions were all future-facing, inviting a franchise icon to face the next step of his career. Draymond has never had the exact same level of job security as Steph has, at one point nearly being traded to Memphis for a package that would have included Steven Adams, Tyus Jones, and the hated Dillon Brooks. But this is the first time he has been publicly shopped by the team that drafted him. He has survived 13 years with a single organization, an icon of Warriors basketball despite all the baggage and drama. He’ll have a statue outside the stadium the moment he retires (I’m hoping for it to be him with Rudy Gobert in a headlock).

During the dynasty years, he was my favorite player – an agent of chaos, exceedingly human in his flaws and drawbacks, a man happy to play the wrestling heel for over a decade. Dillon Brooks can try, but he can’t compare to the original recipe. He’s worn on my patience since, but no one can ever pry my three Draymond bobbleheads away from me.

As he conducted what could be his farewell press conference, he seemed content and happy with whatever the organization decided. I think he knows, after Jimmy Butler’s injury, hard decisions have to be made to set up whatever’s next. But we still don’t know what the organization is actually deciding – at time of writing, there have been no trades. The Warriors haven’t failed in the pursuit of Giannis, but they haven’t succeeded either. The team is stuck in the liminal space where there are a million possibilities in front of them. Once they start committing to one of those possibilities, the others blink out.

They’d love to get Giannis, but that’s out of their hands. They’ve made their pitch. If that doesn’t happen, what does the future hold?

Well, they could do nothing, stand pat and wait out a lost season. That’s the end of an era too. Since 2012, no team with a healthy Steph has been a full no-hope basketball team. I’d always believed there was some sort of damage that the Warriors could do in the playoffs no matter how flawed the roster was. Sure, they’ve failed twice in the play-in over the past five years, but I believed there was a spark of hope in those teams (especially 2021), that no team would want to face Steph Curry if they could just make it in. At the very least, I could delude myself a little bit. When the calendar ticks over to April, if I can at least delude myself for a few weeks I’m happy with how I’ve spent my time.

There’s no room for delusion left in this team. In the absence of Jimmy Butler, the 2026 Warriors are Steph-dependent like never before. The team has a lot of good players I enjoy watching – it’s fun to watch Quinten Post catch fire, Gui Santos zoom around and develop into a starting quality power forward before our eyes, De’Anthony Melton become somehow more athletic and coordinated after tearing his ACL – but there’s no engine in this car without Steph. Even Steph alone isn’t enough to get this car moving at highway speeds.

Tuesday’s game against the Sixers was illustrative. For the first half, the team played broadly connected team basketball, stringing tight defense and hot shooting together into only a 3 point deficit at the half. The motley collection of role players and second round picks put the Sixers onto their back foot, counterpunching after each run.

But this was an illusion. The only Warrior who can consistently create an advantage on this roster is the man himself, Stephen Curry. Without him, the Warriors were dependent on jacking up threes and hoping that the percentages would come up in their favor. The Warriors took a whopping 48 three point attempts in the game versus 30 attempts from 2. The fact that they shot nearly 40% kept them in the game, kept it from being a full blow out. But it’s not a sustainable way to win unless you have elite shooters up and down the roster like the 2024 Celtics. It’s a form of basketball that develops when no one can make it into the paint on their own.

Eventually, the luck ran out. The Warriors missed six consecutive threes on six consecutive possessions to start the third quarter, failing to score until the 7:32 mark of the third quarter. The Warriors would briefly come back a little (two more threes!), but the game was out of hand by the start of the fourth. The team would only score 16 points in the quarter and a slightly more respectable 23 in the fourth. The brief moment of belief in a miraculous win dashed.

The focus on threes happens because there’s no creator, no offensive engine. The Warriors depended so much on Jimmy and Steph to do that for them, to get the step on a defender and collapse the defense and make a decision about what to do next. The Warriors as constructed right now are a collection of play finishers and connectors. Guys who can make the extra pass and hit a three and cut at the right time. But who makes the first pass? Brandin Podziemski? De’Anthony Melton?

Again, I really think these are good players. But having 12 connectors on a roster is not a sustainable way to win games unless you have superstars, plural. The Warriors had two of them two weeks ago, but things change fast. Now we’re hoping for a quick Jonathan Kuminga return to get this team back to watchability, and that’s no place to be, especially when Kuminga himself doesn’t want to be on this sinking ship.

So here we are. I don’t think it’s a controversial or unreasonably pessimistic take to say that this team is going nowhere fast. Everyone knows it. There’s a limit to what even Steph Curry can do. The Warriors have the opportunity to change that. They could hard reset or correct the flaws in the roster around the edges, or stand pat and wait for the offseason. But putting off the decision is a decision too, and that will end the era of contention just like selling off pieces will. Tomorrow this team will not be the same as it was two weeks ago, either in terms of roster construction or faith that they can win (or at least play Meaningful Basketball). We’ve come a long way since Draymond bragged about the Warriors Invitational.

Short of Giannis, I don’t see a way to get to a place where I can be delusional about this team. But smarter people than me are in the front office. Maybe there’s a surprise coming. Right now, I’m mourning the inevitable end of this era of Warriors basketball and eager to get to the next one.