Preview: Warriors bring in the new year with battle vs reigning champion Thunder

Hot (but hurt) Golden State faces juggernaut OKC in first game of 2026.

Despite not really feeling like it, the Golden State Warriors are winners of five out of six coming into the year 2026 and are on what qualifies as a hot streak in this weird and uneven season. Luckily, they’re going into a segment of the season where they play the next ten of eleven games at home, mostly against weak teams (a quick jaunt to LA to play the Clippers breaks up the homestand, but that barely counts.) Unluckily, that long homestand starts with a visit from the defending NBA champions who are playing 29-5 basketball.

Luckily, the Thunder have just dropped four games in quick succession, three against the Spurs and one against the Wolves, and haven’t beaten what I would consider a really good team since November. Unluckily, the Warriors are depleted after their year ending road trip, with Draymond Green confirmed to be out for rest and Steph Curry (ankle) and De’Anthony Melton (knee management) listed as questionable.

Luckily, last time the Warriors played the Thunder, they played extremely hard and took a lead deep into the fourth without Steph Curry playing. Unluckily, the Warriors have taken a lead deep into the fourth quite a few times this season and it hasn’t added up to much success.

What I’m trying to say is, we’ll see!

GAME DETAILS

WHO: Oklahoma City Thunder (29-5) at Golden State Warriors (18-16)

WHEN: Friday, January 2nd 2026; 7:00 PM PST

WATCH: Amazon Prime Video

Warriors excessive depth leads to huge rotation

On Christmas, NBA analyst and podcaster Nate Duncan (no relation, I swear) tweeted a point about the Warriors’ team construction that I’ve been thinking about over the past week.

The Warriors currently have a huge glut of off-guard/wing players who deserve to play but do a lot of the same things. Sure, you can argue the relative quality of Podz vs. Pat vs. Richard vs. Moody, but wherever you come down on the argument, those playing time decisions seem like they’re not making a huge difference in the actual quality of the team. This has led to the Warriors playing a 13-man rotation in their past two victories, with just about everyone but Jonathan Kuminga and the injured Seth Curry getting a chance to see the court in key moments.

(As a side note, the fact that the Warriors are running a 13 man rotation with zero Kuminga playing time continues to be completely bizarre. I get the logic, but it’s one of the weirdest things happening in the sport right now.)

This Strength In Numbers approach is working right now, letting the team play energy players like Gui Santos, Buddy Hield, and Pat Spencer at full sprint for brief periods. It’s fun to see just about everyone (almost everyone) contribute to the mini hot streak. But I’ve seen this storyline play out before: the team started the 2024 season running a 12-man rotation, which lasted right until Buddy Hield’s shooting dried up and the Warriors had to search for more permanent solutions.

This extremely expanded rotation tends to work for a while until players start craving more defined roles they can more adequately prepare for. It’s an experimental option when you’re trying to figure out which combinations work and who plays well with who. But we’re beyond that now, into the second year with a very similar roster. We would have thought the time to experiment would be over by now.

Really, these rotations are a consequence of just not having a lot of hierarchy of talent on this roster: how can you justify a final decision when everyone, to use the NBA 2K scale, is a 78-80 overall? At least Gui Santos and Trayce Jackson-Davis can function in a rotation as a curveball; the Warriors don’t have another rim-running center or a forward that inhales rebounds. The distinction between the Warriors’ six off-guards are more subtle. I don’t envy Steve having to make the decision between Moses Moody or Brandin Podziemski or Pat Spencer or Will Richard in crunch time.

At least De’Anthony Melton has distinguished himself as the best of the bunch and a mainstay of the closing lineups. With him still on a minutes restriction and not playing back to backs, Kerr will have plenty of decisions to make.

Cruising to the Trade Deadline

These rotational questions seem likely to end with a trade. We’ve heard a lot of rumors this week about various teams’ interest in the Warriors players – Dallas inquiring about the Warriors’ interest in Anthony Davis, the Warriors internally discussing the possibility of Michael Porter Jr. Meanwhile Kuminga is eligible to be traded on January 15, less than two weeks from today. With him racking up DNP-CDs, the situation looks likely to resolve sooner rather than later.

Big credit to him for looking engaged on the bench while this situation plays out. Given the current state of the relationship, I would be very surprised if he remained on the team much past that date, and would be absolutely gobsmacked if he weren’t traded by the deadline on February 5. Pending front court injuries, we may have already seen his last playing time with this team.

So, we know the Warriors will be looking to trade him this month, and have basically zero internal leverage: every team in the NBA knows that they’re trying to trade him and the Warriors can’t make a realistic case that they’d just keep him if their price isn’t met. I’m keeping an eye on the trade rumors, but still haven’t been able to get a feel for whether the team is targeting a big move with many moving parts or a smaller move just to end the saga and give Kuminga a chance to start over somewhere new.

That fog of war is probably just how the front office likes it. The one piece of reliable information coming from the front office is that they are unlikely to trade Draymond Green or Jimmy Butler – so the core of this team is probably set in stone and Anthony Davis is not really on the table. But the Warriors front office has lied before.

If I had to guess, the glut of options in the backcourt probably suggests a consolidation trade for a bigger contract… but who knows. As far as communications with the public are concerned, front offices want you to think a trade is impossible until the moment it happens. They don’t have that luxury with the Kuminga situation, but what form that resolution will take is still a mystery.

Prediction

I can’t honestly say I expect the Warriors to win, even if the Thunder are looking human for the first time this season. At time of writing, I don’t even know if Steph Curry will play. That would probably make a difference!

But either way, I think the Warriors are still figuring some things out and the Thunder are already a finished product. I expect the Warriors to play valiantly, maybe take a late lead down to the wire, but eventually get outclassed like they did in November. I’ll be happy if they at least give the Thunder a good scare. If they somehow come away with a win, you’ll see me in the streets.