Warriors win brick-off against Orlando as a reset is imminent

The Dubs rack up another W as we countdown to what may be the final days of this Warriors roster.

The Dubs got a big win last night, and as a special treat we’ve got some recap musings from one of our new scribes, Duncan! Show him some love as he breaks down this big pre-trade deadline victory,

Very few people care about a Golden State Warriors/Orlando Magic faceoff three days before the trade deadline.

It is what it is. These are two struggling teams, teams that are more notable for what they could be by this time on Thursday than what they are now. They’re obviously incomplete teams, and while the Magic have hope that their young players can step into those roles internally with time and repetition, the Warriors are expecting a shakeup in the very near future. They certainly won’t stop hinting at it.

For the Warriors and their fans, this game was overshadowed by the fact that trade season opens up for them tomorrow, February 5, when Dennis Schroder’s contract is eligible to aggregated in a trade for a player making more money than him. It also doesn’t help one concentrate when, holy hell, they just traded Luka Doncic! To the Lakers!! Did you hear??

In this brave new world where they can trade Luka Doncic, what was previously looking like a sleepy trade deadline has plenty of new material to dream on. If they can trade Luka Doncic, what might the Warriors do??

So it’s tough for a game against the Magic on a Monday night to compete with the flying rumors. Who cares about Gary Harris going off – the Warriors are rumored to be calling about Zion Williamson, Kevin Durant, Brandon Ingram, Paolo Banchero (shoot your shot Mike, they traded Luka), Lebron James, Kevin Durant and Lebron James, and just about every other player in the NBA who could remotely help this team! Who cares about how Quinten Post looked on defense when we’ll be replacing him with Nicola Jokic imminently?

As a fan, it’s tough to concentrate on games like this during this time of the year, when we don’t know what this team will look like tomorrow. As a player, I can only imagine how difficult it is to concentrate on a game like this when at the back of your mind you’re thinking about whether you need to start looking into realtors and researching school districts in Salt Lake City.

So, taking a step back, it’s important to realize that this was more than a sleepy Monday night game. The next game takes place after Schroder’s trade restriction wears off. This is potentially our last look at the 2025 Warriors, and, by extension, the last look at the iteration of the team that emerged during and directly after the championship year of 2022. Maybe the Warriors stand pat and do nothing and the nostalgia is for nothing, and maybe they wait until deadline day, February 6, and the nostalgia is one game premature.

But we’re coming to the end of the road on this, and it is very realistic that mainstays (franchise legends, really) like Kevon Looney, Gary Payton II and Andrew Wiggins just played their final game in Warriors uniforms. New arrivals like Buddy Hield and Kyle Anderson could be out the door, too. You might look back on this in five years as the final game in Golden State for anyone not named Steph Curry (they traded Luka Doncic!). As I watched the Warriors brick three after three, it was tough to not want it to end immediately.

But this was also a team with championship DNA, that won a playoff round against the upstart Kings, that got Steph to break the all-time NBA three-point record.

If there’s one flaw that people constantly cite with the Warriors front office, it’s an attachment to role players and a reticence to treat them like assets – you know, “Warriors are reluctant to trade Gary Payton II due to his impact on locker room culture” and stuff like that. I get it. But then I also got slightly misty watching Kevon Looney get five offensive rebounds on a single play in the third quarter, so I’m guilty too.

The actual game

The Warriors and the Magic are a matched set. They are two teams on opposite sides of the slope of time, the Warriors declining and the Magic ascending. But on a spiritual level, the 2025 Warriors and the 2025 Magic are matched – a strong defense covering up an anemic offense, team offenses that are built around taking three-pointers running up against the reality of the situation that their shooters can’t really shoot.

Sure, the Warriors have more shooters than the Magic, and the Magic have more youth and athleticism than the Warriors (especially with Kuminga still out), but I was stunned for most of the game to see both teams sleepily pass around for a while, drive a little, get nowhere, and jack up a three, over and over and over. The Warriors and the Magic, despite their huge difference in timeline and personnel, play the same ol’ boring brand of basketball.

The Warriors looked distracted coming out, for understandable reasons. The new-look starting lineup – Steph, Buddy, Wiggins, Draymond, Post – looked a little disorientated, almost like they had never played together before. Steph and Buddy’s shots were absolutely not falling, which gummed up the offense and put even more responsibility on Wiggins’s plate. Orlando’s squad of elite defensive 6’7 - 6’10” wings didn’t make the discombobulation any easier.

It can always be tough when an elite defensive team faces an incompetent offense to tell which is the driving factor – is the defense dominating, or is it just as good as the offense can get? There was a little bit of both in the first half, with the Warriors clanking open three after open three – but forced into taking threes due to the Magic choking off the paint.

I was especially impressed by Goga Bitadze, a Georgian center who is always a resident of every “most underrated players in the NBA” list because he plays in Orlando. His athleticism and size made the Warriors look terrified to drive inside, and on a night where their threes weren’t falling, that was enough. The Warriors had 43 at halftime, but their own strong defense (and the Magic’s incompetence on offense – a matched set!) kept them tied.

After the break, the Warriors came out with a jolt of energy. According to Moses Moody, Steve Kerr broke a clipboard at halftime, putting a little fear of god into the drowsy and distracted Warriors. It worked, for a while.

Moody and Quinten Post, especially, responded beautifully to the hint of violence. Post came out of halftime with twice as much energy and another dimension of his game, doing his best Jokic impression as a central hub for the offense.

Post’s passing game is underrated: he’s definitely more of a complete offensive player than a simple shooter. He also shows defensive flashes. Again, this is against the 29th ranked offense, so it’s tough to give him too much credit, but he showed quick hands on a steal, played some excellent help defense, and protected the rim a reasonable amount. I think playing with Draymond will help him.

Meanwhile, Moody looked excellent on the wing, shooting 3-for-5 on three and playing great defense (again, asterisk). This looked to be one of the best offensive games of his career, against a top-ranked defense – an encouraging sign. It’s so easy to forget to mention Wiggins, who has just been a rock-solid contributor over this stretch, keeping the Warriors afloat with a consistent 20-30 points per game. He was excellent, the Warriors’ second best player carrying their best player through an extended cold stretch. As always, a key part of everything good about this team.

Of course, because this is the 2024-25 Warriors, an offensive dry spell in the fourth almost gave the entire game away. The Warriors went cold for an extended stretch to start the fourth, while Franz Wagner got hot and started making threes. The Warriors gave back a 15 point lead in the span of six minutes.

Bringing Draymond back in changed the complexion of the game, and was a good reminder of how important he can be to this team (a lesson I myself start to forget when he’s out). A crazy over-the-head hook shot, a timely steal, and the envelopment of a Paolo Banchero midrange turn-around shot bought enough time for Moody to put away the game with a clutch corner 3, and the 2022-25 Warriors ended their run with a W.

A slightly unconvincing W, but a W nonetheless. Next time, maybe this team will be something completely different. Or maybe it will be more of the same.