Curry, Warriors still mowing down opponents
Preview: Hawks and poor returns on diminished player assets set tone for Kuminga
The Golden State Warriors will simply not stop being relevant, not as long as Stephen Curry is here. After soundly trouncing the Sacramento Kings, the Warriors turn their sights to another franchise that has made an extreme pivot away from a player that they thought would be at the center of everything they did. For the Kings, it was the quick dissolve of the De’Aaron Fox relationship that melted their nascent basketball dreams like that poor otter that dropped his ice into the warm water.1
Still, the hope is that one more little trade might help re-up the team’s shot at doing something more significant than making the Play-In Tournament; and on that front, Golden State has just two games left ahead of Kuminga’s trade window.
On the injury front: all clear for the Warriors except for Seth Curry, who remains out with a back issue.
Also, GO NINERS!!
GAME DETAILS
WHO: Golden State Warriors (21-18) vs Atlanta Hawks (19-21)
WHEN: Sunday, January 11th, 2026; 5:30 pm PST
WATCH: NBCSBA
Don’t look now, but the Warriors are playing well again
After that blowout of the Kings, Golden State is three games over .500 for the first time in a good long while (this game) mid-November for those keeping track of such things. It’s been a slow, uneven slog to this point, but there are growing signs that this squad is pointed in the right direction.
No one would recommend having your $20+ million former lottery draft pick riding the deep end of the bench every single night, but Golden State’s stats are healing anyways.
Having survived off their strong defense - Warriors currently rank 15th in offensive efficiency, and are 7th in defense - all of the sudden, the team’s offense has come alive. Some of this is folks coming back to health (notable, Melton and Horford have both been hugely important recently), and some may be due to some clarified priorities within Kerr’s rotations; but one way or another, the Warriors are on an offensive tear!
This isn’t happening in a vacuum, there’s more happening here than just seeing shots begin to fall. The time frame is slightly different from the image above but it’s the same message: offense is humming, turnovers are down:
The Warriors over the 11 games since Dec. 18 are averaging 120 points, fourth in the NBA during that span. In the 28 previous games, they averaged 113.8 per game (23rd). Their offensive rating through the first 28 games was 112.8, 22nd in the NBA. In the 11 games since, their 119.3 rating ranks third.
Most stunningly, Golden State fumbled along with a 1.71 assist-to-turnover ratio (19th in the league) over its first 28 games but has bumped it up to 2.09 (eighth) over its last 11.
Just as we do with the bad stretches of poor play, it’s equally valid to point towards these less-than-full-picture positive snippets. This is the full picture, in all it’s bumpy, messy glory. Maybe, just maybe, Kerr and the Warriors have navigated those early uncertainties, a roster constantly changing due to injuries and team need, and somehow come out the far end looking like they know what they’re doing. Huh, go figure.
“We're in a good groove with our rotation, and helps to have the same lineups out there,” coach Steve Kerr said. “To have Melt and Al both healthy and playing well, it feels like the version of the team that we expected when we signed those guys over the summer. The depth [is great] and we're just getting into a good groove.”
To be fair to Kerr and the Warriors, there’s been a lot to figure out. Playing without their full, designed roster for most of the season has required some early compromises; compromises that didn’t make much sense in the long term - and that showed up on the basketball court. The uncertainty may be contributing to strains that show up in weird ways as well. Draymond Green has seemed extra tense since the Warriors leaked that odd “begs the question” leak about how the team would only trade Green for Giannis.
And yes, that trade is looming. To the extent that you can trust it (not much), the rumor mill is beginning to firm up. Trey Murphy and Herb Jones are (again, reportedly) off the market, with the New Orleans Pelicans have informed rival teams they have “no intention” of trading either of the Warriors’ two targeted players, nor Zion Williamson. They must either see something they like with their current path, or simply haven’t been swayed by initial range of trade discussions. In other news, the Nets are indicating (reportedly) that big stretch wing, Michael Porter jr., is a “lock to be traded by the deadline.
In the interim, the Warriors have accepted the uncertainty and are managing to thrive. It is exactly the sort of resiliency that has helped power this franchise to so much success over the past decade or so. The talent is there - Curry ensures that - but even in the best of circumstances, there’s going to be some losses; many of them painful. Unlike the highest peak of the dynastic mountain, this iteration of the Warriors isn’t chasing the history books so much as running after their own shadows. This is a team with a championship pedigree, but it’s a dusty one, kept in the garage and gathering dust.
“Every team has a belief in themselves until you get smacked in the face; we have been smacked in the face a couple of times this year,” Stephen Curry said. “But we bounced back.”
The process of getting that back to the forefront and reinstating it as the icon you are chasing requires some degree of success first. That whole “we know who we really are” after a good team loses games rings a whole lot more hollow when it’s pretty damn clear - both internally and externally - that you actually do not in fact know. This has long been a cause of friction within the franchise, and is likely the reason Kerr so frequently finds himself in the verbal cross hairs of an anxious fanbase. As the face of a front office that has decided/been forced to straddle various timelines, the pivot away from Kuminga as a development project has freed this squad… or maybe it really is just having everyone healthy.
None of this means the Kuminga experiment failed in a vacuum. It means the clock won. Development is a luxury, and the Warriors are once again behaving like a team that believes it doesn’t have time for luxuries.
One way or another though, the Warriors still consider themselves relevant; and now they’ve started collecting wins again at the pace of a team that bears watching. Nice change from some of those earlier season hard to watch moments. This isn’t about a heater, or a lucky run of opponents. It’s about Golden State finally playing with constraints again - fewer ideas, fewer experiments, fewer nightly auditions. The Warriors don’t look reinvented. They look edited.
Prediction
Dubs win, Niners win, Stanford women’s basketball team beats Duke, and I will not have time today to wash the old motorcycle and put it up for sale (boo hoo).
Apologies. I’m not entirely sure it was an otter that lost that melting ice. And the internet is (for better or worse) chock full of too many gif for me to find it. Please drop it into comments if you know; in the meantime…
Post-game thread up!
Seeing a rumor "deal pretty much done" where we get MPJ and Kuminga to Kangz