Two years ago, when the Golden State Warriors won their first NBA championship since 1975, there was a lot of talk about luck. Most of it seemed to be harmless jabbing or taken out of context. This time, let's be clear: The Warriors, perhaps en route to becoming a dynasty and even the greatest team in history, have enjoyed their share of good fortune.
This is not, by any stretch, a knock on what they've achieved. Every great team needs a little genie rub here and there. The Chicago Bulls don't win six titles in the 1990s if the Blazers take Michael Jordan. Similarly, the Warriors would not be the NBA champion for the second time in three seasons if the Timberwolves don't pass on Stephen Curry in the 2009 draft. Twice.
That's where it all started for the Warriors, and since then, most every move they've made has turned up roses. In 2014, the Warriors cleared almost $25 million in cap space to make a run at Dwight Howard but ended up with Andre Iguodala. In 2016, Kevin Durant hit free agency as an unprecedented cap spike gave the Warriors salary room they otherwise would not have had. Hell, one could say losing Game 7 to the Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals turned out well as Durant is on record saying he "damn sure" would not have signed with Golden State had it won that championship.
Listen, if a club wins even when it loses, there's some luck in there somewhere. It doesn't mean the front office hasn't done an incredible job. It drafted the core of Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson, who have all exceeded the expectations anyone had for them coming into the league. For the most part, they've made their own luck. But the thing about luck is that it can be easy to push. Keep pressing the bet, and you're bound to take a bad beat. Which brings us to the recent rumors that Golden State could be gearing up for a run at Paul George, a free agent next summer.
Before we go any farther, this is not any kind of a report. Tim Kawakami of The Athletic merely mentioned on a podcast that Warriors owner Joe Lacob would surely want to pursue George next summer, which is probably true of every team in the league, and -- like any team -- the Warriors would be wise to explore all options. So this isn't really even about George, or any specific player. It's about that one word: options. The Warriors are going to have many of them for the foreseeable future. And that can be dangerous, even for a front office with Golden State's track record.
Just for argument's sake, let's say the Warriors could get George next summer, but it would ultimately cost them Thompson. George is probably -- probably -- better than Thompson, and that reason alone, on some level, would make such a hypothetical move intriguing. But the Warriors are at a point now where they could become a lesser team by upgrading players, as little sense as that might make.
Think about the Spurs. As they methodically built their dynasty, there often were better players out there than Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. Those guys were great, but that greatness was manifested by how they fit next to Tim Duncan in San Antonio's system. The Spurs knew that. They drafted those guys. And they let them become what they became without screwing with chemistry, always building around them rather than over them.
The Warriors have taken a similar path. Curry, Thompson and Green grew up together, learning how to complement each other and win together. Durant fit in around them, not over them -- even though he's the best player among the four. The sum of the Warriors has become something so perfect that it is by nature fragile. You could never plan a team like this. It just has to happen. And when it does, you don't screw with it.
So far, the Warriors have avoided the temptation to move on premier players simply because they're available to them. They had a chance to trade Thompson for Kevin Love -- probably a better individual player at the time -- in 2014, but passed. Even this summer, there were rumors Golden State turned down a potential George-for-Thompson deal with the Pacers. But that could have been because George has only one year left on his deal and has strongly hinted he wants to end up with the Lakers. If he were, say, willing to commit to the Warriors next summer for the next four years, would they look at it differently?
It would be hard not to. George is an elite player. If Thompson, a free agent in 2019, gets tired of being the third wheel and signs elsewhere, knowing they passed on George -- or any great player -- might be hard for the Warriors to swallow. Now that they've become the league's glamour franchise, there will be plenty of great players who would love to play with them. The more options you have, particularly in a league where power moves are becoming the norm, the more difficult it can be to stay the course.
Right now, it's just a George rumor on a podcast, or a report that at one time the Warriors tried to move on Chris Paul -- which, luckily, didn't come together, because who knows what that would have meant for Curry and the Warriors. But the Warriors have become one of those teams that can turn a rumor into reality very quickly.
Kawakami might have put it best when he said the Warriors want to go after every good player available. That doesn't necessarily mean they would move on those players. Simply doing their due diligence on available players doesn't make them different than any other team. What does make them different is that all those other teams are scouring the landscape to try to put together a team like the Warriors already have.
